BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) — When a street or intersection sees repeated crashes or safety concerns, City traffic engineers say the solution is not always as simple as adding a stop sign or speed hump.
Gavin Grimes, a Civil Engineer III with the City of Bakersfield, said engineers examine several factors before deciding whether a roadway change may help. Those include vehicle counts, vehicle speeds, pedestrian and cyclist activity, lighting and crash data from the Bakersfield Police Department.
“We don’t want to be too rash and just, you know, ‘Oh yeah, let’s just throw a stop sign’ or throw a new crossing here at the mid-block, because that can also lead to other accidents or other unsafe factors,” Grimes said.
The City uses information from police crash reports to understand what may have contributed to a collision. Grimes said engineers consider the type of crash, whether it happened at night, whether there was a lack of lighting and whether speeding was involved…