Hunt Highway crash figures double those reported

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office sent out a press release in December with positive news about Hunt Highway crashes: They were cut in half after the photo radar program began.

Unfortunately, that wasn't true. Not even close.

Crashes actually increased on the road, updated statistics show. And the number of collisions was more than double the figure previously cited by the sheriff's office.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Vanessa White said they released the news with preliminary data based on the number of reports in the system at the time.

That information was missing dozens of crashes.

Hunt Highway is a two-lane artery that serves nearly 50,000 people in the Santan area. The highway, which runs from Queen Creek to Florence, has become a perilous stretch of road in the past few years.

In 2007, there were 203 crashes - more than a 650 percent increase since 2003.

County officials have worked to improve safety by making road improvements and adjusting speed limits. But the results have been spotty. And the sheriff's office hoped to get a handle on the problem by implementing a photo radar program.

On July 9, two radar vans were placed on Hunt Highway. They began issuing citations a month later.

Sheriff's officials quickly touted the vans as a success, attributing to them a 53 percent decrease in crashes months after their inception.

But there was no decrease, and the drop the sheriff's office cited did not account for 55 crashes.

White said there was a delay in adding those reports into records, adding that the sheriff's office is reformatting its records system to provide more timely and accurate data.

The news release said there were only 40 crashes from July 9 to the end of November, compared with 82 during the same period in 2006.

There were actually 95.

There have been fewer crashes so far in 2008 compared with 2007, records show. But the decrease isn't significant, only 14 fewer crashes through May 21. The number of injury crashes has remained the same.

It isn't clear if the downward trend will continue as some months see more than 20 crashes and the summer months have been some of the worst in the past.

Cpl. Paul Compton, who oversees photo radar for the sheriff's office, didn't return a phone call and message seeking comment.

When crashes occur on Hunt Highway, the road is shut down for hours as there are virtually no routes in and out of the area when it is closed.

A deadly crash shut down the highway for 12 hours on May 7, leaving thousands of commuters cut off from schools, businesses and jobs.

That crash occurred near Thompson Road, which falls into the most heavily traveled part of the highway - a five-mile section from Ellsworth to Bella Vista roads where more than 100 crashes occurred in 2007.