Personal injury lawsuit prompts MoDot to investigate a series of

St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, Jun 8, 2007 by Allison Retka

A personal injury lawsuit levied against the Missouri Department of Transportation has returned a $375,000 award and a promise from MoDOT to investigate a series of interstate on-ramps in north St. Louis County.

A 78-year-old driver trying to access one of the on-ramps in January 2005 barreled into Ryan Hill's car, leaving him with a punctured heart and a collapsed lung. Hill and his wife sued MoDOT, alleging the agency's negligent design of the intersection made it dangerous and confusing, ultimately contributing to his near-fatal accident.

MoDOT has initiated a full-scale investigation about that on- ramp and three others like it on a stretch of Interstate 270 in Florissant, said department spokeswoman Marie Elliott.

But Elliott tempered the move by saying MoDOT does not consider the intersection to be a high-accident area.

"The history in terms of that particular accident just doesn't show that it's a common occurrence of accidents to make it particularly dangerous," she said. In the five years before Hill's accident, there were only 12 collisions in the intersection, all of them resulting in minor property damage and no injuries, Elliott said.

Hill's attorney Bob Pedroli Jr. insisted the history of the intersection is fuzzy because of a faulty accident reporting system among local police forces.

He said the number of accidents on these "slip ramps," the name for on-ramps that jut out from two-way frontage roads butting the freeway, is impossible to know because of mislabeled police reports and discrepancies in the naming of roads.

"You can't tell why all this happened," Pedroli said. "It's probably just innocent bad record-keeping, but it clearly indicates that the accident statistics are lacking."

The setup of the intersection at Dunn Road and I-270 made it prime for collisions like Hill's, he said. Cars waiting on Dunn to jump onto the on-ramp must yield to oncoming traffic, but many drivers zip in front of traffic or dart around yielding vehicles. With no traffic islands, signage or stoplights, Pedroli said the area is a chaotic free-for-all.

"For most of the traffic traveling through that intersection, few cars were traveling at or near the speed limit of 45 miles per hour," he said. "All were slowing down to 15 or 20 because they knew the traffic was not going to yield. They know that the law is violated there regularly. It's very dangerous for older drivers and drivers not familiar with the area."

Mike Wright, a spokesman for AAA Missouri, said slip ramps can be difficult for drivers not familiar with them. While most states have a few of them, they are fortunately uncommon, he said. Wright found the accident rate cited by MoDOT for the area very low. Some intersections see 100 collisions a year, he pointed out.

The $375,000 award for Hill - another $100,000 was secured from the insurance coverage of the man who crashed into him - was the result of an arbitration session the first week of May.

According to court documents, Hill's medical bills topped out at $266,702.

MoDOT refused to talk settlements, Pedroli said. He also steered his client away from trial litigation, fearful that jurors would not be receptive to the case.

"There was not a lot of upside for us if we roll the dice with a jury," he said. "Jurors tend to believe their taxes might go up if they hit the state of Missouri with large judgments."

Instead, three trial attorneys heard evidence and testimony over several days and on May 31 issued an award ordering MoDOT to pay damages and attorneys fees. The award attributed the amount to MoDOT's admission during arbitration "that the dangerous condition of the intersection contributed to the cause of the injuries sustained by Ryan Hill."

Elliott said the layout of the intersection is one of several factors that could have caused the accident, including the motorist's driving habits and attention span.

The evaluation launched in the wake of Hill's claim will examine the accident history of the intersection and the consistency of signage, road markings and the general lay of the land, she said.

But Pedroli doubted anything about the perilous on-ramp would be changed until MoDOT feels the squeeze of political pressure.

"They're not going to make an analysis like a corporation would," he said. "They're not going to make an economic analysis of how many people will be hurt versus how much it will take to fix it."