As cars narrowly pass by one another along FM2181 at any given time of day, construction couldn’t end soon enough, officials say.
Wednesday morning’s latest accident at Blue Jay Drive and FM2181 is another reason to remind residents to be mindful of construction, Corinth police said.
“Don’t speed, and be cautious of your surroundings,” Corinth police Sgt. Clint Ventrca said to help reiterate to residents that construction zones can be dangerous.
Ventrca said police were dispatched at 7:38 a.m. after a 30-year-old Corinth woman driving a Honda Pilot failed to yield at the stop sign at Blue Jay Drive while turning left and pulled into oncoming traffic along FM2181, striking two other vehicles.
The woman struck a Mazda Millenia traveling eastbound before she rolled her vehicle over, striking a Honda Odyssey headed northbound on Windsor Parkway at Swisher Road/FM2181 that was stopped at the four-way intersection.
Ventrca said the woman was taken to Denton Regional Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries.
Police said they don’t have accidents there every day, but they do happen.
“A lot of people are trying to get out and beat the traffic right there,” said Ventrca, who has been with the department for 15 years. “Residents need to seek alternate roads in the city when at all possible ... everyone needs to slow down and pay attention.”
Michelle Releford, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation, said construction began this February to widen FM2181 from a two-lane roadway to a six-lane divided roadway between FM2499 and the western frontage road of Interstate 35E in Corinth.
Construction for the project, she said, is costing $23.6 million and is expected to be substantially completed by March 2016.
Virginia Holt, a resident of Kensington Estates, said in an emailed statement Wednesday that TxDOT’s refusal to put a traffic signal at the “dangerous intersection” was partially to blame for the Wednesday morning crash.
She said residents of the neighborhood near the accident were trapped for more than an hour, causing children to be late for school.
“TXDOT’s FM2181 expansion has reduced traffic in and out of Kensington Estates’ 242 homes to just one, steep gravel-ramped lane,” Holt said in the email. “Without Denton ISD buses, [Kensington Estates] students must be driven to their 3 schools, though some children dart across the busy road.
“Several times a day, rather than make a dangerous left turn off a gravel ramp, hundreds of parents travel straight across Windsor which turns into Blue Jay in Cypress Pointe Estates.”
Holt said she expects accidents to continue until a traffic light arrives.
“TxDOT planned to put an emergency [exit] from FM2499, but this wasn’t done,” she stated.
The intersection has two stop signs — one on Blue Jay Drive and one on Windsor Parkway, Ventrca said.
According to Releford, existing traffic signals within the project boundaries will all be replaced.
Those signals, she said, will be at FM2499, Post Oak Drive, Park Ridge Drive, Garrison Road/Ronald Reagan Avenue and Hickory Creek Road and will not be installed until mid-summer of next year.
MEGAN GRAY-HATFIELD can be reached at 940-566-6885 and via Twitter at @MGrayNews.
