CDOT suggests improvements to deadly Pueblo County intersection

PUEBLO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO)-- It's a deadly intersection that's already taken the lives of four people this year. Now, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is looking to fix the area of divided highway at U.S. 50 and 36th lane.

CDOT presented a traffic study to the Pueblo County Board of Commissioners Thursday, recommending an intersection conflict warning system for U.S. 50 and 36th lane. It would blink and tell drivers when another car is waiting at the intersection.

Currently, there is just a stop sign with a blinking light.

The traffic study indicated that the intersection did warrant a three-way traffic light, but a representative for CDOT told the commissioners that federal regulations likely wouldn't allow it. He explained that implementing a stop light in an area with high speeds could result in drivers getting rear-ended.

But not everybody is on board with the plan, including the family of three of those victims.

Seven months have passed since a great-grandmother and two of her great-grandkids were hit making a left turn onto Highway 50.

"This is what changed my whole world. My whole world was dumped upside down," Rachel Frazier said, standing at the memorial where her two children and grandmother were struck. "It's just a reality slapper that, you know, this is it. This is my life now."

The area is a known problem. According to a CDOT study, between 2015 and 2020 there were at least 9 crashes there. Earlier this year there were two deadly crashes, leading to four deaths within less than a month. That includes Frazier's family.

But for Frazier, and Chris Roberts, who lost his daughter in the same crash, the recommended intersection conflict warning is not the solution.

"I made a promise to my daughter on her bed at Children's [Hospital] that we'd get a stoplight here," Roberts said. He believes without a three-way stop light, people will continue to just roll through the stop sign.

"It makes us feel like they died in vain," he says of the traffic study findings.

CDOT says it does have the money to implement the intersection conflict system it's suggesting.