A man was left in critical condition and a woman was taken to the hospital in stable condition after a three-vehicle collision Friday afternoon at the intersection of 51st Avenue and Cactus Road in North Phoenix. The Phoenix Fire Department was called to the crash around 4 p.m., and two people in total were hospitalized following the wreck, authorities said.
According to KTAR News, Phoenix police took over the scene from fire crews to investigate. Under the City of Phoenix’s own procedural guidelines, the department’s Vehicular Crimes Unit is the specialized team dispatched to handle scene investigations and collision reconstruction whenever a crash produces fatalities or critical, life-threatening injuries, with medical care taking priority before detectives begin reconstructing how the three vehicles collided.
The intersection where Friday’s crash happened is not new to serious wrecks. It ranked #81 on the Maricopa Association of Governments’ list of the top 100 highest crash-risk intersections in the Phoenix metro area, a ranking built from crash frequency and severity data collected between 2017 and 2021, as the regional planning group’s findings were reported by the Daily Independent. The association scores intersections across 27 member municipalities using a weighted formula that accounts for how often crashes happen and how severe they are.
A History of Serious Wrecks at This Corner
This isn’t the first time the junction of 51st Avenue and Cactus Road, which sits directly on the border between Phoenix and Glendale along a busy commercial and residential corridor, has produced critical injuries. In November 2021, a two-vehicle crash there subsequently struck a pedestrian, leaving two people critically injured, according to a report at the time from 12News…