Olethia Thomas was heading home to Detroit from work, driving south on I-75 in Troy, when rain turned into a deluge and forced her to slow to 45-50 m.p.h. and grip the steering wheel a little tighter.

A driver behind her noticed too late.

"All of the sudden, I looked in my rearview mirror and there was a car speeding at me, and when he tried to stop, he couldn't," said Thomas, a contract machine operator for an Auburn Hills auto supplier. "When he hit me, it made me start spinning in a circle, and my car went off the freeway into a ditch."

A Free Press analysis of traffic crashes in southeast Michigan shows that collisions like Thomas' are a regular occurrence on the stretch of I-75 with a big curve between Rochester and Maple roads in Troy. That segment of freeway had among the most wrecks in metro Detroit in a three-year period the newspaper examined.

Neither driver was seriously hurt in the Sept. 22 crash. The man who hit Thomas declined to comment, but insisted he shouldn't be considered responsible for the wreck because of the circumstances. Police disagreed and ticketed him.

Drivers crashed 125 times in 2007-09 on that stretch of I-75 aside the gleaming suburban office towers near the Oakland Mall prone to chronic rush-hour backups.
The most accident-prone roads

The stretch of freeway with the highest number of crashes in southeast Michigan is on a sharp curve where the risks exploded in a fiery gasoline tanker crash that toppled half of a freeway overpass.

Northbound I-75 between John R and 9 Mile Road in Hazel Park was already a trouble spot before the July 2009 collision that collapsed part of the 9 Mile bridge over the expressway, leading to months of extra traffic jams and a costly overpass replacement and freeway fix. No one was seriously hurt in the accident.

That stretch of I-75 had more crashes than any other in the seven-county region in 2007-09, according to a Free Press analysis of 2,938 segments of highway ranging in length from 10.5 feet to 4.7 miles.

The tanker crash was one of 206 on the northbound side of the freeway alone on that stretch of I-75, according to state traffic crash report data compiled by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments and studied by the newspaper.

The analysis of Michigan State Police traffic crash data found:

• Among the other top 20 high-crash segments of freeways in metro Detroit, most are in the suburbs, and more than half are in Oakland County.

• I-96 and I-75 stand out, with seven high-crash segments each. In fact, stretches of both directions of I-96 near Inkster Road in Livonia and Redford Township rank highly. And there's a cluster of segments of south I-75 near Chrysler's headquarters and M-59 in Auburn Hills that ranks highly for crashes based on the freeway's traffic volumes.

• A high-crash freeway segment doesn't necessarily mean it's more dangerous than another, traffic experts say. Of the 1,566 crashes on high-crash sections of freeway in that three-year period, only one person was killed.

Despite being in a crash on I-75, Lynda Stahl of Plymouth said she feels safe on freeways, if not impressed with other drivers. One of them rear-ended her the night of Sept. 10 as she and her husband, Ben, headed home from a visit to their son's home. She was on southbound I-75, just south of Rochester Road, when she slowed for a traffic backup and a driver in an SUV behind her did not.

"It came as a total surprise," Stahl said. "It pushed me into the lady in front of me."

The driver who caused the wreck drove off and was never found, and a license plate was never reported to track the driver down.
Fewer fatalities

Traffic crashes on expressways tend to get more attention and affect more people stuck in traffic jams. But freeways are safer than local roads, traffic experts said, because they're designed to keep heavy volumes of traffic moving at higher speeds without obstructions such as cross streets and stoplights.

None of the collisions on that one-fifth mile stretch of northbound I-75 between John R and 9 Mile in 2007-09 was fatal. Experts say that's not surprising.

Driving is dangerous but it's getting safer, with the number of fatalities dropping nationwide last year to 33,808, a level not seen since the 1950s. Traffic experts say part of the reason is the declining number of miles driven in a dismal economy. But other factors include less drunken driving, more drivers buckling up, better-designed roads and increasing vehicle safety features, such as air bags.

Of the 871 people killed in traffic crashes in Michigan in 2009, 80 were on interstates. The rest were on smaller state and local roads, according to the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning. The agency said 509 of the deaths were on county and city roads.

The comparative safety of expressway travel bears out even factoring in the number of miles traveled by drivers. The highway safety office said the number of people killed in crashes on interstates based on every 100 million miles driven in Michigan was 0.3, compared with 1.4 on smaller state highways and 1.1 on county and city roads.

Drivers are warned

Traffic safety officials from SEMCOG and MDOT say they regularly monitor crash data, looking for trouble spots that may require changes, big or small. On freeways, that could mean posting warning signs, or boosting police patrols, or it could require more substantial fixes long term.

The I-75 curve at 9 Mile has long been a high-crash section, springing from its initial run north through Detroit into Oakland County with a sharp turn in Hazel Park. If it were built today, that part of I-75 wouldn't be constructed as it was 40 years ago, said Matt Smith, the Michigan Department of Transportation's traffic and safety engineer for metro Detroit.

"The design standards were a lot different than they are now," Smith said.

For years, that segment of I-75 has had flashing yellow lights and signs advising drivers to slow down and stay in their lanes. The 2009 tanker crash there cost the state $12 million to rebuild the 9 Mile overpass and about half a mile of the expressway.

MDOT spokesman Rob Morosi said the state had already planned to put up new electronic signs over the freeway that will measure speeds and alert drivers to traffic slowing or stopped ahead or of snowy or icy conditions. The freeway lanes also were rebuilt with a steeper bank to help drivers maintain control through the curve.

Morosi said the state hopes to have the new signs running early next year.

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com

http://www.freep.com/article/20101205/NEWS05/12050588/Free-Press-analysis-of-accidents-finds-the-most-accident-prone-stretches-of-freeways-in-metro-Detroit#ixzz17RDZ1mUO