Route 7 Intersection Tops List of Riskiest for '05

101 Crashes at Lansdowne/Ashburn Road

For the first time since 1998, the most crash-prone intersection in Loudoun County is not along Route 28.

Instead, the intersection of Route 7 and Lansdowne Boulevard/Ashburn Road took the top spot, with 101 crashes in 2005, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, which has listed the most common crash locations every year since 1998.

Route 7 intersections held the top three spots in 2005 and five of the top nine.

"Investigators have told me that when they're responding to Route 7, west of Sterling Road, they're sure it's someone's who's run into the back of another vehicle," sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell said Tuesday, "people following too closely, reckless driving, driver inattention."

Route 28 at Church Road/Waxpool Road, which held the top spot for the previous three years, dropped to fourth place and had 26 fewer crashes in 2005, the first full year with its new flyover interchange in operation.

A similar flyover at Route 7 and Lansdowne/Ashburn has been under construction since November 2004, with work on the last section of the cloverleaf underway.

The Sheriff's Office regards the fact that both intersections led the county while they were under construction as a coincidence, Troxell said.

"It's just the volume of traffic going through that intersection every day," he said. "The traffic on that stretch of Route 7 has been steadily growing over the years."

Ryan Hall, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Transportation, noted that a high number of accidents at an intersection doesn't necessarily mean it's dangerous.

"Most of the ones on that list are intersections with traffic signals, so you're talking mostly fender-benders," Hall said.

"Signals always create congestion, and they create the possibility of a rear-end accident," he said. "But without a signal, the chance of a T-bone or a more serious accident goes up. Once you put a stoplight, the number of accidents can go up, but the degree of severity drastically goes down.

"And, of course, an interchange completely eliminates that interaction," Hall said.

The Lansdowne interchange should be completed in March or April, said Leonard S. "Hobie" Mitchel, president of Lansdowne Community Development LLC, the contractor on the project.

"When it's completed, hopefully we'll see zero accidents there, and we've pushed the problem on down the road," Mitchel said.

In 2005, two intersections were new to the list: Loudoun County Parkway at Waxpool Road, near the MCI campus, and Route 50 at Loudoun County Parkway, near South Riding.