Buying a Home In A Safe Neighborhood

Dangerous Intersection Ahead

If you are buying a home these days you should probably do your due diligence on dangerous intersections that are within a few blocks of your home.  Especially if you have kids and these kids like to play outside and walk to school or around the neighborhood.  Common sense would tell you that your local government should provide a map of these hazardous intersections and provide this data to Google Maps and other navigation sources.  Does this happen?  Off course it doesn't!!!   

One of the biggest concerns of a prospective home buyer today is the safety of street and neighborhood.  What kind of traffic on the street next to the home and is it safe to walk the streets and have my kids play outside.  Most people don't often think of doing due diligence on historic accidents in the neighborhood or street.  We have even done a map showing dangerous schools near hazardous intersections.  

Most drivers are much more more distracted than they were 20 years ago and thus accidents and pedestrian fatalities have increase significantly.  Here is an article about the top reasons that cause a dangerous intersection and another article about the top 10 causes of death among people ages 15-29.  

It is not always transparent if you are new to a neighborhood if there have been historic problems with a particular intersection and its not easy to find news articles and get information.  In fact, not all cities keep historic accident records and are required to publish the information for fear of liability.  Public relations is a huge part of trying to squash any negative press about intersections that are "dangerous by design" because cities don't want the liability or lawsuit.  Cities don't have fix problems unless they are forced to fix the issue with enough pressure.  

Here is a person in Redondo Beach that won a lawsuit against the city for $27M because he proved the intersection was dangerous by design and the city did nothing to fix the problem.  

BadIntersections.com uses public news data sources and user contributions to map dangerous vehicle, pedestrian, bike and train intersections.  We collect thousands of new fatalities and articles from around the World highlighting dangerous intersections.  The map is free to search and can be found by clicking on the map below.   If you see an intersection area that you would like us to add please email us an article or click on the + directly on the map to contribute the location.  Keep in mind we do not accept all submissions unless the information is complete with substantiated evidence.  

  

Map of Hazardous Intersections & Fatalities

We often get emails from real estate agents looking for data to help their clients better understand what dangerous intersections exists in the neighborhood near the home.  This is often true of out of state buyers looking at homes who are unfamiliar with the area.   Home buyers from out of the area often want to get a feel for the area without having to see the location first hand and want to know if a particular home or apartment is near any hazards. 

Badintersectionscom is actively trying to dangerous intersection locations used by real estate companies like Zillow, RedFin & Realtor.com.  We think hazardous road location data should be an attribute used by real estate companies similar to how Walkscore provides a information about things nearby a home like schools, restaurants and parks.  

Most real estate companies have been very reluctant to share this data with prospective home buyers for obvious reasons.  Why would any real estate agent want to give a reason NOT to buy a home?  Hopefully, this culture of dishonesty will change in the near future and this data can provide some transparency.  

City Found Liable for Faded White Lines at Intersection

In a civil trial launched in Hamilton, Canada a court heard that the stop line on Fifth Concession Road West, where the sedan should have stopped, was faded and virtually invisible to drivers. The sedan instead stopped at the stop sign before pulling out into the intersection. According to the court documents, city staff had identified months earlier that the stop line needed repainting and had recommended it, but hadn't gotten around to it. Court heard there were "regular" accidents at that intersection. Years before the crash, a neighbor had petitioned to have reflective "tiger stripes" painted on the roadway there (which have since been added).

This is Why LAX Traffic is Such a Mess!

Southwest Terminal 1 Construction & Drop-Off Bottleneck

Look at the satellite image picture above.  When is the last time you saw no traffic during the day when dropping off at LAX?   LAX drop-off traffic is a complete mess and has been ever since Southwest Airlines embarked on their new terminal 1 construction.  It now takes passengers up to 30 minutes just to get into the airport once you are nearby.  On several occasions, it has taken me 20 to 30 minutes just to get from underneath the tunnel to the drop-off gate at terminal one.  It doesn't matter if it's noon in the middle of the workweek or 4:30 am.  The delays of getting into the terminal are ridiculous and caused by a poorly designed construction plan.

The wall you see in red is consolidating traffic from 6 lanes down to 4.  Traffic merging and Southwest drop-off are causing the bottleneck that backs up for almost a mile outside of the airport. I have been flying out of the Southwest terminal for two decades and traffic never used to be this bad even during the busiest rush hour periods.  Cars used to be able to flow in and out of terminal 1 drop-off freely without a bottleneck.

LAX Southwest Terminal Traffic Congestion

No police officer or traffic manager is capable of managing or correcting the flow after the light.  It doesn't take a genius to see that cars are getting stuck trying to drop off passengers because they now are forced to drive a few hundred yards further.

What is this wall protecting and why does it have to stick out and cut off 2 lanes of drop-off traffic?  The wall looks to be useless has caused hundreds of thousands of passengers to miss their flights who don't arrive 2 before their flight.  Can they simply remove it or push it back until the end of the construction project?

You can thank these companies for the $500M 4 year construction plan & ridiculous mess that looks to be with us until 2018:  AvAirPros, ODEMCO, PGAL and Hensel Phelps Construction Company.

LAX Terminal One Construction Managers

It is obvious that nobody from any of these companies above did any traffic studies on the impact of cutting off 2 lanes from 6 down to 4 that feed into the terminals.  I am also surprised to see very little news coverage on the topic.  The news seems to attribute the problem to the increased traffic volume of passengers but I know this is a completely false excuse.

Are any executives from LAX doing anything about the problem?

Have any other airlines thought about taking legal action against these companies or LAX for the miss-management?

Flying out of other regional airports is becoming a more viable option these days even though I live 10 minutes from the airport.  It now takes me just as long for me to get to John Wayne Airport (40 miles away) as it does to LAX (5 miles).

I would love to hear your comments below.  Please send this blog post to your friends, politicians, and LAX officials.  Let's get this problem solved quickly.

Listening to the Republican National Convention speech about Donald Trump fixing an ice rink years in a few months and millions of dollars cheaper than the Government inspired me to write this lengthy blog post.  My gut tells me this is just incompetence and not an oversight because nothing is being done to fix the obvious problem.  I think LAX is a prime example of bureaucracy getting into the way of fixing things quickly and efficiently.   Hopefully, this blog post will be read by the people in charge and take action.