Sheriff’s dept.: U.S. Highway 51 south of Minocqua is deadly

Calling it the perhaps the deadliest stretch of highway in the state of Wisconsin, Oneida County sheriff’s captain Tyler Young said recently the state needs to seriously address crash issues with U.S. Hwy. 51 south of Minocqua from County Rd. D to Hwy. 8, a reach of highway that continues to pile up serious wrecks and fatalities.

“I would venture to guess that it is probably the deadliest stretch of two-lane highway in the state of Wisconsin,” Young said.

According to a recent analysis by The Times, records from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office show they have responded to nearly 1,000 multi-vehicle crashes along the troublesome stretch of highway since 2010. That figure does not include incidents handled by the state patrol.

In addition, in a report of the “Top Accident Intersections” from Oneida County, the top three most frequently crashed intersections were found between Hwy. D and Hwy. 8 along Hwy. 51. The intersection at County Hwy. K and Hwy. 51 topped the list with 87 total accidents; in second position was Rocky Run Road and Hwy. 51, with 82; and third, County Hwy. L and Hwy. 51 with 59.

Of those crashes reported by Oneida County, 27 of them have resulted in one or more fatality.

“Our top accident intersections are all on Hwy. 51,” Young said. “That tells you that is our problem area.”

In the month of July alone, five total accidents that involved cars turning on or off Hwy. 51 at Hwy. K or Swamp Lake Road (directly across Hwy. 51 from Hwy. K) were reported. Three of those occurred during the Fourth of July holiday weekend. 

In September, several people were injured in a three-vehicle crash at the intersection of Hwy. 51 and Hwy. K, with five people taken to area hospitals, one by medical helicopter.

The most recent fatal crash occurred this past July, taking the lives of two beloved members of the Lakeland community, Greg and Audrey Bohn. While turning into their driveway, located on Hwy. 51 in Hazelhurst near South Blue Lake Road, they were rear-ended into oncoming traffic and struck in a head-on collision.

In 2014, three 22-year-olds were killed in an accident near the intersection of Hwy. 51 and Fernwood Road. Raquel Nunez and Justine Ringberg were traveling southbound when they entered the northbound lane and collided with a propane tanker driven by Minocqua resident Jeremy Ritchie. The crash left no survivors. That crash did occur under extremely icy conditions during a winter storm.

In November of 2023, Robert Canfield, a 77-year-old from Sun Prairie, was killed when a Mack semi-truck struck his Cadillac at the intersection of Hwy. 51 and Hwy. K. That specific Hwy. 51 two-lane corridor has claimed several other lives, but Young points out that it doesn’t have to be a fatal accident to have a lasting impact on the community. 

“Look at the sheer number of accidents,” Young said. “They don’t have to be fatal. You can have people losing limbs or have life-changing event accidents and it’s not fatal.”

Curiously, while the number of crashes since 2010 in that area seems extraordinary, the problem itself is long-standing. In fact, U.S. Hwy 51 has posed a fatal problem to the Northwoods community since its genesis almost 100 years ago in 1926. A Sept. 11, 1980, issue of The Lakeland Times carried an editorial entitled, “Must even more be killed, injured?”

The piece highlighted the very same Hwy. 51 stretch south of Minocqua and called for safety measures along the dangerous corridor. 

“No more time should be wasted in taking the necessary measures to prevent more fatal accidents, more injuries, more property damage on Hwy. 51,” the editorial stated. 

Still the same

Apparently no one was paying attention because almost 45 years later the crashes and the fatalities keep piling up. And while local law enforcement, firefighters, EMS personnel, and first responders — not to mention citizens — sound the alarm, the state Department of Transportation has taken a much more measured approach, even downplaying the suggestion that the highway stretch is particularly dangerous.

For example, the recent accident that killed the Bohns sparked responses from the community sharing their concerns with the stretch, Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) and Minocqua resident Rich Handrick said. 

“The crash was awful, tragic and has raised some awareness and some concern,” Handrick said. “We’ve been hearing comments from the community members and we’ve had some other inquiries and stuff like that on the corridor on safety and traffic volumes and speed and enforcement.”

But, according to Handrick, data from all reportable accidents is collected and entered into a database that the DOT uses to identify target intersections and areas where necessary safety measures need to be taken, and he says that stretch of highway doesn’t pop up a red flag, particularly.

“Hwy. 51 in this area is performing on average so it’s not standing out as a safety problem as a corridor,” he said. 

Handrick did add that one of the areas flagged for an above average crash site is the intersection of Hwy. 51 and Hwy. K as well as Hwy. 51 and Swamp Lake Road, and that help was on the way, scheduled for construction in 2027.

Last week Bryan Rose, the DOT’s north central region communications manager, forwarded safety data from DOT engineers to put Handrick’s categorization into context, offering some comparisons with other highway stretches and just how the DOT determines when it does become a problem.

That data shows crash rates for 2018 to 2022 on an 11.03-mile stretch along Hwy. 51 from just north of County Hwy. D to County Hwy. K.

According to DOT engineers, a segment of roadway flags for safety when the crash rate in that segment is one standard deviation above the statewide average crash rate for its peer group. Translated, approximately 16 percent of segments throughout the state generate a crash flag.

Within the Hwy. 51 corridor between Hwy. D and Hwy. K, about 1.3 miles are flagged for safety, or roughly 12 percent. Those segments are a one-mile stretch running north from Hwy. D, and the .3 mile segment from South Blue Lake Road to County Hwy. Y.

Beyond those two segments, Rose said, the overall corridor crash rate is within 1 standard deviation of the statewide average, so the combined corridor itself would not generate a crash flag.

Intersections tell a slightly different story. Rose said the methodology to calculate intersection flags is a lot more complex but, overall, about 14 percent of intersections statewide are flagged for safety.

Rose said it was important to note that deer crashes are included with the intersection crash data, whereas segments do not have deer crashes. 

“This can lead to false intersection flags due to deer crashes,” he said.

That aside, six of the 15 intersections within the corridor, or 40 percent, were flagged, but Rose says that doesn’t mean the intersection is in line for a safety upgrade.

“It is important to note that without each intersection being individually analyzed and vetted to remove animal and other non-related crashes, it is difficult to determine if individual intersections qualify for safety improvements,” Rose said. “Due to the sheer number of intersections statewide, WisDOT creates an annual database of highest crash rate intersections.  These intersections are then analyzed further for potential safety improvements. This is the process that led to the US 51 / County K / Swamp Lake Road being approved for safety funding.”

The other intersections flagged for safety are Hwy. 51 and Fernwood Rd., Hwy. 51 and Rocky Run Rd., Hwy. 51 and Hwy. Y, Hwy. 51 and Raven Lane, and Hwy. 51 and Hwy. D.

Against the grain

While the DOT has flagged those six intersections — and will improve the Hwy. 51 and County Hwy. K and Swamp Lake Road intersection — as well as a small segment of the corridor itself, the DOT’s overall assessment of adequate safety in the corridor runs against the grain of most observers, such as that of Captain Tyler Young, who has suggested that the answer lies in a four-lane expansion from Hwy. 8 to Minocqua.

Handrick said that just isn’t warranted.

“As it stands today, we know what the volumes are, it doesn’t really trigger or warrant an expansion,” he said. “We know that the corridor is performing adequately from a safety standpoint, it’s comparable to other similar segments throughout the state. There’s nothing there that’s triggered a push for it to go four-lane as a major type of project. I know that’s not probably what people want to hear, but that’s what the numbers, the data and the fiscal reality of it is.”

But it’s not just Young taking issue with the assessment that the corridor is performing adequately with respect to safety. Cassian fire chief of seven years Mike Leair says he has responded to many accidents within the stretch and agreed with Young that the data is concerning. 

“Any accident is bad and a number of them in the same area (means) something has got to be looked at,” he said. 

Similarly, Nokomis fire chief Joe Jelinek, who has served since July 2023, said there have been several crashes in his department’s jurisdiction, as well as surrounding towns and communities.

“There seem to be quite a few recently,” he said. “I can remember at least three in the last eight months and I know there have been a couple more further north and a couple more further south.”

A closer look at the DOT numbers provided by the agency to The Times actually bear out the local observations. Indeed, while only 1.3 miles of the Hwy. K to Hwy. D corridor along Hwy. 51 score more than one standard deviation from the statewide crash average for peer highways, nine of 11 segments within that corridor score at least some above that average, if most are slightly less than one full crash deviation. 

In other words, 10 of the 11 miles in the corridor score above the state crash average. Indeed, taking the corridor as a whole, the total crash rate scores .96 above the average — very nearly reaching the threshold of one standard deviation that would warrant flagging the entire corridor.

Essentially, using a reasonable deviation range, the corridor would warrant flagging, and a slight increase would almost certainly cause the entire corridor to be flagged. It’s important to remember, too, that the DOT crash data is based on numbers from 2018-2022, so 2023 and 2024 crash numbers are not factored in. 

While it’s not certain until the DOT updates the numbers, the 2024 crashes in the corridor — the July and September crashes and fatalities — might well push the numbers beyond the threshold needed to warrant a flag, and would certainly put it on the cusp, at the very least.

Solutions

So what are the potential solutions?

As mentioned above, Young believes the corridor needs to be expanded from Hwy. 8 north to Minocqua, but the DOT says that solution isn’t called for.

“From a state traffic volume standpoint the road does not (need) four lanes,” Handrick said. “In order for it to prove to be a four-lane, that warranting criteria is one of those big things. For the traffic volume it’s carrying, it’s well within the parameters that we expect.”

Young said he disagrees with the DOT regarding year-round traffic volume. 

“They’re looking at it for the year, and they’re saying in the winter it’s low,” he said. “In the summer when a highway is 15 miles per hour and it’s backed up past Tomahawk or further south than that yet, I have a tough time saying that that’s not a traffic problem.”

In addition to the DOT’s data not pointing toward the need for a four-lane highway, Handrick said the funding for that type of project just isn’t there. 

“One of the major issues is simply funding,” he said. “Road construction costs are so high that a project of that magnitude would fall under what we call a ‘majors’ program.”

A “majors” project, Handrick said, is a select extreme high cost project that would have to compete for statewide funding in that program. Handrick added that a large part of what the DOT does is spend money where the traffic volumes are. 

“Realistically, there’s a lot more traffic in the southern part of the state than there is in the northern part of the state, and so we know we’re always in competition for funding so we fight for what we can get and make the improvements that we can,” he said.

That frustrates Young.

“Right now the state is saying it’s not busy enough through the year to meet their threshold to make that change,” he said. “Until that happens, I don’t see this getting much better. “

As for the  Hwy. 51 and Hwy. K and Swamp Lake Road intersections, Handrick said improvements are in the pipeline, but final decisions have not been made about what the improvements will be.

“They identified that that’s a location where we think there’s probably something we can do geometrically to the highway to make a highway improvement to fix the crash problem,” Handrick said. 

Those intersections, he said, were submitted for highway safety improvement program (HSIP) funding and awarded $900,000 — $800,000 of federal funding and $100,000 of state funding — to take safety measures to improve the intersections. 

“When we start a project like this, our job is to look at all the different alternatives that might be available,” Handrick said. “In an intersection we have to look at a roundabout and that is something we take all those different options through the process and the public involvement is a big part of that process.”

The DOT will be holding public involvement meetings to talk to the public about the intersection and about some of the improvements that could go there, whether it be a roundabout, traffic lights or a different solution to fix the crash problem, Handrick said. 

According to Young, he thinks while roundabouts could be a potential solution, it could create congestion and in turn cause frustrated drivers to take unnecessary or unwise risks. 

“The nice thing about roundabouts is you have slow-speed impacts,” he said. “You’re not going to have as many fatalities and things like that, that’s a positive about that. What you’re going to get is more accidents based on congestion. All the sudden people slowing down for the roundabout, traffic is going to back up, because you can only go so fast around the roundabout and you know you’re going to get more rear-ends and things of that nature.”

Handrick said construction for a geometric highway improvement at Hwy. 51 and Hwy. K is planned for 2027, after a decision is made on how to fix the crash problem. 

“The plans and all these specifications and everything are due to be completed by our office by November of (20)26,” he said. “The construction will start in 2027.”

Still, the HSIP funding, while awarded to help solve the crash issue at the Hwy. K intersection, leaves a majority of the corridor left without a significant safety solution. 

Finally, while the highway corridor itself has prompted safety concerns, both Handrick and Young made the point that driver behavior no doubt contributes to the problem.

“Inherently with times changing, I think we see a lot of distracted driving with cell phones and that sort of thing,” Young said. “I think speed is also a factor.” 

Handrick agreed that, from a professional standpoint and personal standpoint as a Minocqua resident, a lot of the issues relate to driver behavior. He said sometimes it’s the geometry of the road that contributes to it, but most of the time it’s driver behavior leading to crash issues. The highway, he said, can only do so much and we need to find a way for people to slow down and pay attention. 

“We’re seeing just anecdotally and even in the data, we’re seeing significant issues with speeding and distracted driving,” he said. “Enforcement can only do so much, they’ve got a really tough job and enforcement as we know is out there on 51 trying to do the best job they can.”

From Young’s perspective with the sheriff’s office, he said it’s a burden for them to be responding to all the accidents. Per Oneida County reports, over 600 speeding citations have been handed out along the Hwy. 51 two-lane corridor.

“We have many other highways to do and town roads and county roads,” he said. “We can’t have a car out there on (Hwy.) 51 at all times.” 

The only way for something to be done, Young said, is for people to bring awareness to the issues on the highway and be a “squeaky wheel.” He thinks many members of the community will agree that some sort of action needs to be taken. 

Richard Moore contributed to this story.