Safety concerns on Highway 285 near Shaffers Crossing

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — The most recent crash on Highway 285 at Shaffers Crossing kept a major road closed overnight Wednesday morning.

Colorado State Patrol (CSP) statistics show this is at least the fifth crash to have occurred in Shaffers Crossing or within two miles this year.

If we go back 11 years, the number of accidents on this three-kilometer stretch of Highway 285 reached 285.

“There are people with bumper stickers that say, 'Pray for me, I drive a 285 every day,'” Barb Halverson said.

Halverson lives near Kings Valley, just north of Shaffers Crossing. She describes her daily movements in a unique way: life or death.

“I finally bought one of those cameras, car cameras, just because I'm going to get hit one of these days, and I want to be able to prove to the insurance company that it wasn't my fault.” , Halverson said. . “Or being able to say goodbye to my children because I was killed.”

Early Tuesday evening, a tractor-trailer left the road at Shaffers Crossing, dropping a load of pipe and angle iron. This load landed on five vehicles. A person in a vehicle was killed.

The semi-trailer crossed the cable barriers of the central reservation and the guardrail and got stuck on the edge of the road.

“We need to understand what types of crashes have occurred in the area, why they are happening and what types of crashes we can potentially prevent or mitigate,” said Matt Inzeo, spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). ). “What kinds of problems can we solve, knowing that there is no single, perfect solution, especially in an area like this? »

Highway 285 is the responsibility of CDOT, but accidents are investigated by CSP. In records dating back to September 2011, CSP recorded 338 crashes in a two-mile stretch around Shaffers Crossing.

“If you're talking about steep slopes, sharp turns and the possibility of high speeds, you're going to face a problem,” Inzeo said.

In 2016, CDOT installed cable barriers in the median. This was a response to several head-on collisions and near misses. Southbound traffic has two lanes. Northbound traffic has one.

“We almost got hit hard once we got there. Our son was driving and someone was coming. There are two lanes going down the hill and one lane going up. We were going up the hill. He was coming down and decided he needed three lanes, and luckily my son was smart enough to get out of the way,” Halverson said.

Before 2016, there were no barriers in the median. CDOT originally planned to install concrete jersey barriers, but instead chose cable barriers due to concerns about creating a new hazard in the winter.

The problem was that the snow plows would not be able to remove all the snow from the road and would let the snow pile up against the barrier, which would melt and melt onto the road during the day and freeze in the cold temperatures the night.

“The specific concerns that may arise from freezing and thawing conditions are that you may have a day that would otherwise be very pleasant and someone may find themselves on a stretch of road where, quite reasonably, they may not wouldn't expect to see a patch of ice. , and they can hit him. This is a very serious danger that we must avoid with great caution,” Inzeo said.

“We need law enforcement, some sort of barrier, whether it's concrete, whether it's wire, something to keep people in their own lane,” Halverson said.

Halverson and Inzeo point out that drivers speeding is a problem that can be solved without changing the appearance of the road.

“You're talking about a very steep slope, with very sharp curves, and with these ingredients we still also care about speed,” Inzeo said.

The speed limit is 45 mph, with a flashing sign for southbound drivers warning them to slow down.

As for the road layout, there is a mountain on one side and a steep drop off on the other, leaving little room for redesign.

“The road needs to be repaired. We have potholes. The shoulders are horrible, but if you leave you are lost. It’s not just about the obstacles, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Halverson said.

“There will always be trade-offs regarding the infrastructure we install in a given area. We want to understand these tradeoffs as precisely as possible to make the best possible decisions,” Inzeo said.

According to the CSP, Highway 285 is the fifth highway on which speeders are penalized for exceeding the speed limit by more than 20 mph.

In 2023, CSP issued 791 tickets to drivers traveling at speeds greater than 20 mph on all of Highway 285, not just near Shaffers Crossing.

The number one area for CSP tickets of 20 mph or more is Interstate 70, with 3,047 tickets last year.

Interstate 25 saw 1,992 tickets.

Drivers traveling on Highway 50 through southern Colorado saw 1,367 tickets.

Highway 24, which runs through the Central Mountains and Eastern Plains, was fourth on the list for the most tickets for driving 20 mph or faster, with 979 tickets.

SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Next with Kyle Clark