HUMPHREY, Neb. – Humphrey has been home for an R-CUT intersection, the first one of its kind in the state.
Nearly halfway between Columbus and Norfolk, the intersection has a three-year crash rate of 1.49 crashes over millions of vehicles, meanwhile, the state’s average is 0.4, according to NDOT.
“Well we’ve had a lot of accidents with traffic trying to cross 81 in the past, usually there was an accident every few weeks,” said Kara Gronenthal, manager of the Klub 81 Travel Center in Humphrey.
N-DOT stepped in to help, proposing an R-CUT, which aims to reduce the number of places a car crash could occur in the intersection by 40 percent.
“The town of Humphrey really fought it, signed petitions and everything that really didn’t do any good,” said Gronenthal.
Despite the pushback, N-DOT finished the R-CUT in November.
“Since it’s gotten done, we haven’t had an accident since,” said Gronenthal.
Gronenthal said it’s hard to complain when there are no more crashes.
“Well, most of us hate to admit it works,” said Gronenthal.
