Kennewick’s Most Notorious Roundabout Strikes Again
The Kennewick roundabout at 19th and Union has had its fair share of snafus, for a plethora of reasons, usually traveling too fast, and this time a Yield sign and that darn fence (again) were hit. Speedy Gonzalez apparently failed to negotiate the roundabout at 19th while traveling north on Union in Kennewick. Actually, taking a second look at the pictures, I'm not sure what the heck happened here.
I could not shag any specific statistics regarding accidents in Kennewick roundabouts over the past few years. There were 21 total roundabouts in Kennewick as of 2014, the most in the state of Washington at the time, and I'm pretty sure that number is closer to 25 now, but again, no confirmation on that.
The double roundabout at SR 395 and Highway 240 seems to be more confusing at first glance, but the accidents in the dual loop usually occur if someone is not giving a large truck enough space to negotiate the roundabout, as the big rigs usually need both lanes to get through safely, or if someone moves from the inside lane to the outer lane trying to exit the roundabout, cutting across flowing traffic potentially causing a collision.
Accidents in the Tri-Cities have been trending down for years in our area because of roundabouts, according to Washington State Department of Transportation.
Back in 2016 the data was clear: "We know for fact the total number of accidents in general has been reduced just under 40 percent. More importantly, we've had a reduction of about 75 percent with injury types of accidents," said Moe Davari, Project Engineer for the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The city of Kennewick's first roundabout was put in at the intersection of 27th and Vancouver streets, and the statistics tracked since show injury accidents were reduced 90 percent when that roundabout was first put in.