The construction zone on I-94 between St. Joseph and Stevensville has really kept police busy this year.
The highway is down to only two lanes of travel in each direction with concrete barriers and no shoulder on each side of the road for much of the zone, making things tight. The police departments for both St. Joseph Township and Lincoln Township have been primarily responsible for responding to crashes in the zone, and both have seen a lot of action.
St. Joseph Township Police Chief Randy Leng tells us from April 1 to October 23 of this year, his department responded to 43 incidents on the highway. During the same time period last year, it responded to 19. Leng says there have been a few injuries, but thankfully, no fatalities.
Michigan State Police Sergeant Jason Sweet of the Niles post tells us crashes in work zones like this one are often the result of bad driver behavior.
“The primary issues we see the most are typically unexpected slowdowns and lane shifts,” Sweet said. “So, we have times where due to the changes in traffic, due to congestion of traffic, we get sudden slowdowns and people aren’t providing enough space for the driver in front of them.”
Sweet says a lot drivers fail to appreciate that their own actions affect other drivers.
“You have a certain contingent of the drivers out there who are a little less than mindful about the fact that there are other people out there. Everybody’s trying to get where they’re going. It’s not a race. Everybody’s just reaching their destination.”
The work zone crashes in Lincoln Township have also been a big issue. Lincoln Township Police Chief Gary Soper tells us his department has responded to 257 calls for service this year, compared to 152 last year. Calls for service are calls about any issue, but they include crashes.
Soper says that section of highway is tricky in a normal year, but the construction has made it worse. He says due to the narrow lanes and barriers in the construction zone, there little room for driver mistakes, even slight ones. Just this week, his department dealt with a car that had been dragged along the barrier by a semi.
Soper urges drivers to just slow down and stay in their lanes when going through the zone. He looks forward to the project moving to a stretch of the highway to the east next year.
Michigan Department of Transportation spokesperson Nick Schirripa tells us the agency plans out construction zones based on factors like available lanes, access points, and bridges. He says this zone left little room for a different plan, but says MDOT certainly learns lessons from its projects and something different could be tried as the I-94 reconstruction continues next year. However, Schirripa also tells us the agency can’t always engineer its way out of human error.