Collision study underway

The last “listening post” for public comment on Highway 195 will be today in Colfax.

The Department of Transportation has held three other forums in towns along the highway this week. The department is asking for citizen suggestions on the highway’s safety, in order to put together a comprehensive collision study.

A main complaint from the 15 or so visitors to the Pullman post Tuesday was the need for passing lanes, according to Dave Dean, route development engineer with the DOT.

“I’d advocate for passing lanes, especially Pullman to Lewiston,” said Nancy Mack, a Pullman resident who stopped by to fill out the DOT’s survey.

Another visitor, Nancy Flechsig of Pullman, told the Gazette this too was her concern. The lack of passing lanes on the highway is an issue, she said.

For the past two months, the DOT has been e-mailing and mailing flyers to citizens and entities near the highway, asking people to fill out the DOT’s survey.

The department had already collected about 275 surveys as of Tuesday, Dean said.

The survey can be accessed at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/US195.

The two-lane highway is the main north-south route through Whitman County, connecting from Spokane County to the WSU and UI campuses, and the Lewiston/Clarkston Valley. It is a major route for the farming traffic generated by the county’s agriculture.

The study seeks to “gain a better understanding of the collision characteristics within the US 195 corridor,” according to a press release on the study from the Spokane office of the DOT.

There were 768 collisions in a five-year-period on Highway 195 from Spangle to the Idaho stateline, according to data from the district DOT office in Spokane.

Of those 768 collisions, 16 involved fatalities and 291 resulted in an injury. The number one factor in the majority of accidents was speeding, according to a spokesman for the DOT. There were 266 accidents in which excess speed was a factor.

The data from the DOT came from accident reports filed by the Washington State Patrol.