Glenview's 10 Most Dangerous Intersections

At the 3:15 p.m. final bell, many of ’s high school students schlep their backpacks out to their cars and commence scattering to the winds at the same time scores of parents arrive to pick up their classmates. Fifteen minutes later, nearby Illinois Toolworks’ day shift lets out and some 200 employees also hit the road.

In between the two is the traffic signal at West Lake Avenue and Pfingsten Road, the most dangerous intersection in Glenview in 2010, according to police department figures released last week.

“We call it the suicide spot,” said Dennis, a maintenance worker at the tool plant who preferred not to use his last name. “I’ve seen a lot of doozies over there.”

Police rank intersections as dangerous using an algorithm that takes into account both the number of crashes and the amount of traffic that flows through an area.

So, while West Lake and Pfingsten’s total accident number, 27, is lower than the 38 crashes at the number two intersection, East Lake and Shermer, it has a higher “index number,” meaning the likelihood of accident is higher per car utilizing the intersection.

Accidents in the statistics include any crash involving a car, bike or pedestrian.

Here, a breakdown of the most dangerous intersections in Glenview, according to the police department.

To the right, check out a map of the village with dangerous intersection rankings plus safety tips from Police Sgt. Terry Urbanowski and a list of road improvements planned at the top five intersections. 

1. West Lake Avenue and Pfingsten Road: 27 crashes; index of 3.13

Despite the “suicide spot” moniker, only 4 of the 27 crashes were injury accidents in 2010, all minor. Twenty-one were rear-end crashes, which Urbanowski said is your typical “beat the light” accident.

2. East Lake Avenue and Shermer Road: 38 crashes; index of 2.81

Though it is still one of the most heavily traveled and dangerous intersections in Glenview, this intersections is “tons better than it was four years ago,” according to Village Engineer Russ Jensen. The Village of Glenview took over responsibility for Shermer Road from the state and widened and improved it from Golf to Lake.

East Lake Road, Glenview’s main east-west arterial and one of the busiest in town, appears twice on the top 5 list; East Lake and Waukegan is another danger spot.

3. Willow Road and Patriot Boulevard: 47 crashes; index of 2.61

An estimated 35,400 cars a day use Willow Road, classified by road planners as a “strategic regional arterial,” which is one step below an interstate. Where it intersects with Patriot Boulevard is the main entrance to the Glen from the north. Also, just north of the intersection is Costco and Home Depot.

“That little plaza there, it doesn’t look like much, but it gets a lot of traffic,” Urbanowski said.

Forty of the 47 crashes were rear-enders.

“It’s another high volume intersection,” she said. “People are trying to squeeze through it.”

4. East Lake Avenue and Waukegan Road: 50 crashes; 2.44 index

A relatively high number of the crashes attributable to this busy intersection are right angle or T-bone crashes: 18 of 50. But they tend to be low-speed, non-injury crashes caused as people try to thread their way through stopped traffic to get into or out of the Trader Joe’s or Boston Market lots, Urbanowski said. As traffic begins to back up, motorists will try to turn left into or out of the shopping plaza through congestion. One car will stop to let them through, Urbanowski said, but a car in the lane they can’t see keeps coming.

“It’s a packed corner, probably the second most busy in the city,” said Jensen, the village engineer. Unless the city or county puts it in their road construction plans, he said “it’s probably the next major intersection on the village’s radar.”

5. Glenview Road and Greenwood Road: 21 crashes; 2.21 index

A major ongoing upgrade of this intersection is scheduled for completion in June, and traffic engineers hope the changes will lower the number of crashes here and reduce the volume of cut-through traffic in the adjoining neighborhoods. The 3.85 million project put an additional lane north and south on Greenwood and installed right turn lanes on Glenview. Motorists have been looking for a way around the back-ups in the intersection since the 1990’s, Jensen said.

“This is going to relieve that tremendously,” he said.

Other Dangerous Spots

6. Willow Road and Pfingsten Road

7. West Lake Avenue and North Milwaukee Avenue

8. Willow Road and I-294

9. Chestnut Avenue and Lehigh Avenue

10. Chestnut Ave. and Waukegan Rd.