The Associated Press
HARTFORD, Vt. (AP) - State transportation officials are asking the U.S. Border Patrol to improve warning signs and lighting at a checkpoint on Interstate 91.
Agency staff have scheduled a meeting Oct. 8 with the federal law-enforcement agency to talk about improving safety after four people died last week at a crash at a similar checkpoint in New York state.
Four people died in the fiery Sept. 19 crash on Interstate 87 in North Hudson, N.Y., across Lake Champlain from Bridport. Police have said an inattentive tractor-trailer driver didn’t slow down as he approached the checkpoint and plowed into vehicles waiting at the stop. The driver was charged with criminally negligent homicide.
The accident was the second crash at the checkpoint in seven months. In February a tour bus slammed into the back of a tractor-trailer stopped at the checkpoint, and more than 50 people were injured. Following last week’s crash, several New York lawmakers questioned the safety of the checkpoint.
Vermont and Border Patrol officials said no accidents or close calls have been reported at the I-91 checkpoint, just south of the interchange with Interstate 89. Drivers who pass through the checkpoint said there’s sufficient warning. The Transportation Agency says improvements should be made nonetheless.
“From our perspective, it’s not bad, but nothing’s good when you’re trying to stop traffic on a highway where the speed limit is 65,” said David Scott, director of program development for the state Transportation Agency. “If the intent is to keep doing this, then a small investment of homeland-security money could make it safer.”
The Hartford checkpoint, like dozens of others across the country, is a well-marked, critical law-enforcement tool to help prevent terrorism, said Leslie Lawson, assistant chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Swanton sector, which covers the U.S.- Canadian border from Ogdensburg, N.Y., to the Maine-New Hampshire line.
Lawson said the Border Patrol works to ensure checkpoints are safe for motorists.
“We are continually evaluating our operations, all of them,” she said. “It’s not just in response to a tragedy. Law enforcement is a constantly evolving operation.”
The safety improvements Vermont’s Transportation Agency would like to see at the Hartford checkpoint include permanent lights to illuminate the stop and the waiting line of traffic; warning signs with bright, flashing lights attached; and a permanent, electric sign with a changeable message, Scott said.