ST. GEORGE – River Road claimed yet another accident as a three-car pileup shook the community Thursday morning.
The accident occurred near the intersection of River Road and Riverside Drive.
“A couple seconds (passed) and the next thing I knew, I was in (the other vehicle’s) bumper,” Wendi Norton, who drove the third car, said. “It just happened so fast.”
Though police and medical responders arrived shortly after, surrounding drivers and pedestrians immediately came to the aid of those involved. They notified the authorities, helped people stay calm and sorted the situation out.
“It was just great how the community came together,” bystander Gailene Walker said. “There were probably ten cars (that) stopped to help.”
Witnesses said that the woman in the second car had a baby in a car seat. Her airbag deployed and she was transported to the hospital with minor injuries. The baby was not injured and was released to her mother and brother after receiving a medical check-up at the scene.
None of the vehicles’ occupants are believed to be in serious condition. And with the assistance of the community, the scene was cleared quickly.
River Road is fast becoming a common location for car accidents with high speeds and numerous intersections. Drivers, be careful and stay alert.
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These types of accidents can be avoided if the people in this town would learn to drive 3 cars ahead. Everyone here is in such a rush to get nowhere. I live in Ivins and the most it will take me to get anywhere is 30 minutes to get to Washington Walmart. There’s no reason people should drive in this town like they do. I watch people run red lights and 9 times out of 10 I meet up with those same people at the next light.
Running lights, tailgating, offensive driving all serve nothing beyond ego stroking. I don’t understand it and it has become so egregious in this town.
I am glad that all the people involved in this accident are okay, but this type of accident is one of the easiest to avoid: keep at minimum a car length between you and the car ahead of you and watch the lights of the cars ahead of them, sometimes you can avoid becoming part of the problem after the person in front of you unfortunately misses the brake lights from the person ahead of them.
And for god’s sake people, hang up the d*^n phone and stop texting. If you have to adjust your stereo, wait for the next light if it’s not a simple volume adjustment; something that can be done without looking.
When you are on the road it isn’t just you that is at risk of injury due to your bad driving habits.
I’m in Ivins too. I totally agree with the red-light running. I ride a motorcycle to work and I am nervous everyday.
This should be a wake-up call to St. George Police Dept. All they have to do is assign an unmarked vehicle to sit and watch and observe the speeds that are being driven in the area. Do they even have a clue as to how long it takes a vehicle to exit the DRMC parking lot onto Foremaster? The vehicles traveling east and west on Foremaster are driving in the range of 40-50 mph and it is a posted 30 mph zone. River Rd. is a posted 40 mph sone and vehicles travel at a minimum of 50 mph. This gets worse as shift change begins at DRMC. St. George PD needs to get more reactive in this area. Less accidents would occur if the police were more visible in this area.
Mike H, this stuff happens in any city that has rush hours and a decent sized population, buddy.
The one good move the city made was raising the limit on Red Hills Expwy to 50mph. Most traffic flow on newly, improved Dixie Drive goes at a minimum of 50 eventho limits are set at 40.
I’m not justifying speeding, but a reality that tends to occur when urban areas spread out, creating longer drive times, is people will increase speeds. Just drive in any larger city.
Big Surprise, hey “buddy”, if you look at the time stamps on Facebook for when they announced the accident it was around 11 o’clock, well after/before any supposed “rush hour” and let’s face it, rush hour in this town constitutes 15 minutes. Based on your comment in defense of the poor driving in this town I feel safe to assume that you may be one of those people I see at the following light. I’ve lived in large cities like LA and Vegas and yes their traffic is bad/worse but that does not excuse the driving in this town. I watched a belly dump run the red light up on Red Hills Parkway and 1000 east just last week. This was not a “soft red” it was red before I got to the intersection and the semi was several car lengths behind me. The light was green for the people coming up the hill for a couple of seconds before that truck came rolling through at speed. Imagine what could have happened there if those individuals had not been watching and waited for that truck to blaze on through. smdh.
I am not talking about traffic congestion here. I am talking about people running lights, tailgating, speeding (A LOT, 60 on Snow Canyon Parkway? really?), blocking intersections, not yielding to emergency vehicles, no turn signals, using turn lanes for merge lanes or traffic lanes, talking on the phone and ignoring the fancy little lever that lets people know you’re changing lanes or turning, texting, toying with an iPod, all cite-able offenses and all of them dangerous. Stupid, just stupid. Just the other day I followed a car from Diagonal all the way to Bestbuy and I was seriously concerned the person driving was probably drunk; swerving in and out of her lane both into traffic and dangerously close to the curb. I was thisclose to calling the cops to report her, and voila at the light I discover she has a phone in her hand. Surprise surprise.
We could fill up the coffers in this town with the revenue from citations for these types of infractions if we had enough police to actually monitor. But this town takes a lackadaisical attitude towards this stuff. I’ve never seen/heard of anyone cited for blocking intersections. And the light coming off the freeway NB into Washington used to have a “no turn on red”, but since so many people ignored it, instead of citing them, they chose to take the sign down instead. psh.