Route 18 and Paulus Boulevard

Route 18 and Paulus Boulevard in New Brunskwick.

(Kate Mishkin | For NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK -- On a September morning in 2014, a bus backed into Catherine Chiles' Mitsubishi Galant as she waited for the light to change at Paulus Boulevard and Route 18 in New Brunswick.

Later that day, Officer Christopher Goldeski's patrol car went spinning through the same intersection after being T-boned by a driver crossing the opposite way.

Two days later, the police were back to attend to another crash.

Welcome to the most dangerous intersection in New Brunswick, where cars crash into each other an average of once every other week, a problem so well known that local residents hardly flinch when they hear sirens in the distance.

Police responded to 173 crashes at the intersection between 2010 and 2014, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Transportation. Or about 35 crashes a year.

While the intersection accounts for only a small percentage of accidents statewide, it's the worst in the city and seventh-most dangerous in Middlesex County. The six others in the county also intersect Route 18, according to the data.

Alejandro Ojeda, who lives in an apartment complex adjacent to the intersection, said he knows people get hit all the time. The green arrow is the worst, Ojeda said.

"If you don't make it in 30 seconds, you're done," he said.

Experts say there isn't anything particularly unusual about the design of the intersection, but rather it suffers from its close proximity to Route 1 and an entrance to Interstate 95, making it a thoroughfare for drivers headed southbound out of New Brunswick.

"There are things further downstream that make it horrible," said Kelcie Ralph, an assistant professor of urban planning at Rutgers University.

Traffic feeding into Route 1 usually moves quickly, while traffic can be stopped going into I-95, Ralph said. When people try to merge in and out, crashes happen.

A $200 million, federally funded construction project targeted a 1.35 mile stretch of Route 18, including the intersection, in 2005. After the roadwork, crashes on Route 18 decreased dramatically, the data shows, while problems at the intersection persisted.

"As I like to say, they put nice bricks in," said Robert Noland, who teaches at Rutgers' Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. "They made it very pretty."

The first time 10-year-old Leylanniz Bracero saw a car crash, it was at that intersection, right next to her house. She was riding her bike outside, but the crash sent her running inside. Now, she's seen three.

She can't imagine being behind the wheel.

"I wonder how that feels," she said.

Ralph estimates most of the accidents happen at low speeds. And, as a silver lining to its infamy, many pedestrians know about the intersection and know to be careful. From 2010 to 2014, no pedestrians were reported injured or killed.

Noland said slowing traffic on Route 1 might help out. In theory, he said, so would speed bumps.

"You couldn't do that on that road," he said. "It's a high -speed road. It's designed for high speed traffic."

If the streets were wider, there would be more room to maneuver, Ralph said. But that will attract more people to the intersection who previously avoided it.

"If you widen the street things are flowing, so you think 'it's ok and I can visit my friend at 5 p.m. on a Thursday,'" she said. "But you're back at square one."

A spokesman for the State Police, Lt. Brian Polite, said distracted driving also contributes to the frequency of accidents at intersections.

"What's the first thing they [drivers] do at a light?" Polite said. "They get on their phone, and they don't initially start driving at the green light, or they might run a light."

When Bracero starts driving, she'll try to avoid the intersection near her apartment. She doesn't want to practice driving on that road.

The last time she saw a crash, she ran inside again.

Running through her mind, she said, was, "Woah, I can't believe there's another one."

Erin Petenko may be reached at epetenko@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @EPetenko. Find NJ.com on Facebook.