YOUNGSTOWN — The city has installed a new concrete barrier with brightly colored poles rising out of it in an area along Marshall Street just west of downtown to improve safety.
The barrier is there to prevent people exiting Interstate 680 north from making a right turn off the exit ramp, crossing Marshall Street, to enter West Avenue to travel north toward Mahoning Avenue.
Charles Shasho, deputy director of Youngstown Public Works, said a big reason for the new barrier is that there have been a “significant number of crashes there” involving people making a right turn off of the exit, which is illegal.
The reason it is illegal is that a driver turning right cannot be in the left lane, Shasho said.
It is legal to turn right onto West Avenue from Marshall Street, but not from the freeway exit because it is illegal to make a right turn “in a left lane,” Shasho said. The city has also received complaints about people making the illegal right turn onto West Avenue.
The barrier prevents people from making the right turn from the freeway exit, but not from Marshall Street, which runs alongside the exit ramp near West Avenue.
“We tried to put cones there. We tried to put delineators there. They just kept running them over and making the right turn anyway,” Shasho said. “If that fails to work, we will be putting a guardrail up,” he said.
Shasho was asked about a case a couple of years ago of a young woman entering that I-680 exit ramp going the wrong way and causing a fatal crash by hitting a car coming north on I-680 head-on.
Shasho said he was not aware of that crash, but he said the Ohio Department of Transportation did update all of their wrong-way signage on the I-680 exit ramps about a year ago. The exit ramp involved is considered the northbound Glenwood Avenue or Mahoning Avenue exit.
Jayce Klink, 25, of Poland, served about five months in prison ending in August 2023 for a Dec. 2, 2020, crash on I-680 north in which she entered the freeway the wrong way on the exit ramp near Marshall Street.
The crash killed Tiara Whatley, 35, and badly injured her sister, the driver of their car, Sharenda Whatley, 34, both of Youngstown.
Klink traveled a short distance onto I-680 north in the wrong direction before she encountered vehicles coming toward her. A witness said he saw Klink swerve to avoid two cars but hit the third one — the Whatley vehicle. Both cars sustained heavy front-end damage, a Youngstown police report states.
Klink pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide, a third-degree felony and aggravated vehicular assault, a fourth-degree felony, and was sentenced to one year in prison. Her driver’s license was suspended for five years.
She was released about seven months early on what is called judicial release, which is a type of prison release approved by the sentencing judge.
Ray Marsch, ODOT spokesman, said ODOT has made changes to signage on exit and entrance ramps throughout Ohio to improve safety and deter wrong-way drivers, including on I-680 in Mahoning County.
Among the changes made are “adding dual wrong-way signs and placing wrong-way signs lower on the poles because research has shown that impaired drivers tend to look down instead of up,” Marsch said.
He said ODOT also has installed directional arrows on the ramp pavement to indicate the correct traveling direction.
He said 2018 data indicates that wrong-way crashes make up 0.01% of all crashes in Ohio. “But when there is a wrong-way crash, they tend to lead to fatalities or injuries,” he said.
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