WESTERLO — A fatal car accident has prompted the town of Westerlo to take what limited steps it can to deal with the controversial intersection of county routes 401 and 404. 

At its July 15 meeting, the Westerlo Town Board voted unanimously to request a blinking traffic light from Albany County at the intersection, which saw the death of a 38-year-old Jessica Rowinski after the SUV she was riding in failed to stop at a stop sign and was struck by a tractor trailer on June 30. 

Supervisor Matthew Kryzak noted at the meeting that the town would include an online petition in its request that, as of July 21, has over 2,000 signatures from people asking for some kind of safety enhancement there. 

County spokeswoman Mary Rozak said she did not have any information on the cost or timeline associated with such a request, and that it may be unknown until after the county completes a traffic study at the intersection.

The intersection is infamous in the community, with many people saying at the meeting and writing beneath the petition that they’ve personally had close calls there, blaming it on the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit and poor visibility of the stop signs. 

However, data on the number of accidents at the intersection has been hard to come by, for both The Enterprise and town officials. 

The Enterprise had a Freedom of Information Law request for 10 years worth of accident data denied by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, which responded that it had no such data; the newspaper currently has a FOIL request open with New York state after failing to get it through informal requests.

Despite the sheriff’s office’s rejection of the Enterprise request, email correspondence between the sheriff’s office and Westerlo officials shows that the office does have data, and that, in the past five years, there have been five personal-injury auto accidents at that intersection. 

Kryzak told The Enterprise he is still hoping to get more data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, but said during the meeting that there have been five accidents at the intersection this year alone, including a “bad one” in May that was the original impetus for the town to seek accident data. 

However, “Regardless of what the traffic study says, regardless of what the data says, we have our objective results of this intersection being 55 MPH in both directions,” Kryzak said at the meeting. “The signage is not great. You can’t deny the loss of life, and that’s going to be the position that we take with the county.”

He said he thinks the county will be receptive to the request and that the petition “speaks very loudly … Nobody in their right mind would deny this.” 

Shortly after the crash, the county’s public works commissioner, Lisa Ramundo, said in a statement that the intersection was in full compliance with New York State’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, with stop signs fully visible and along with a stop-ahead sign alerting drivers to the upcoming stop. 

“We cannot speak to the specific operations of the motor vehicles involved in the most recent accident at this intersection,” she said at the time. “However, even where there is full compliance with MUTCD, people that operate motor vehicles may place others at risk when failing to comply with the rules and regulations set forth in the New York Vehicle and Traffic law, including driving at excessive speeds and failure to obey traffic control devices.”

The police report for the crash does not indicate the speed of the two involved vehicles, only that the driver of the SUV, 40-year-old Adam Rowinski, “failed to stop at the stop sign of County Route 401,” resulting in the vehicle being struck in the middle of the driver’s side, killing 38-year-old Jessica Rowinski and injuring all other passengers, including their two sons, ages 14 and 15, and 73-year-old Linda Rowinski. 

Albany resident Debra Trees, who wrote in a letter to the Enterprise editor last week that she is a friend of the Rowinskis, wrote a letter to Sheriff Craig Apple this week that was shared with The Enterprise, saying, “Although the County of Albany Traffic Control person responsible for evaluating whether the signs there meet federal and safety guidelines has consistently commented that the site meets all regulations, I would like to respectfully point out that it doesn’t seem to be working. 

“You know much better than me, but there have been several accidents and even another fatality at that site,” she says, referring to a 2008 crash that claimed two lives, according to the site city-data.com. 

Trees offered some specific suggestions for safety improvements — such rumble strips, speed control, and caution lights — but did not show any preference for one in particular.

“I signed the Online Petition for this cause, but I told my friends, Mr. Adam Rowinski and Mrs. Linda Rowinski that I would be writing to you directly about this,” she wrote. “I know we can make this crossing safer.”

The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to an Enterprise request for comment.