Was a roundabout to blame for crash that killed U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski?

Farm Bureau board members asking INDOT to investigate, look at whether curve on approach to intersection contributed to head-on crash that killed Congresswoman and three others.

In 2014, when the Indiana Department of Transportation was planning on replacing the traffic light with a roundabout at the intersection of two state roads in northern Indiana, many people in the area raised concerns.

One of them was Dwight Moudy of the Indiana Farm Bureau, who in an interview with WSBT at the time, questioned the need for the roundabout.

“One of our concerns was, the intersection the way it had been for at least 30 years, there had not been very many serious accidents,” he told Crossroads Report this week. “We went back and looked through the records and — no fatalities and no major crashes.”

But the Indiana Department of Transportation went ahead with the construction of the roundabout anyway.

“What we found is, the way they designed this roundabout,” said Moudy, “you do curve very dramatically to the right, to the east to get into the intersection, and coming out of it, coming south, if you are not really paying attention, there’s a point where you’re coming around where you’re lined up directly with the northbound lane.”

The intersection in question is in Elkhart County, where State Road 19 meets State Road 119 a few miles north of Nappanee.

On Aug. 3, Rep. Jackie Walorski and two of her staffers were approaching the roundabout heading north on State Road 19 when the vehicle they were in crossed the center line, killing all three of them and also the driver of the southbound car that was hit — 56-year-old Napanee resident Edith Schmucker.

Walorski’s district director, 27-year-old Zachery Potts, was driving at the time of the crash.

It’s thought that the vehicle, a Toyota RAV4, continued straight on State Road 19 instead of following the curve of the road to the right at the approach to the roundabout.

Notably, State Road 19, a two-lane road with one lane traveling north and the other traveling south, is straight as an arrow before and after the roundabout, which you can see in this video.

Also notably…before the roundabout was built in 2015, State Road 19 went straight through the intersection, which had a stop light.

It did not curve as it does now.

The curve was a feature of the roadway that was introduced when the roundabout was built, as seen in the aerial maps below that were provided to Crossroads Report by the Elkhart County surveyor’s office.

This first photo shows the intersection before the roundabout was built. State Road 19 is the road shown heading north-south:

This second photo shows how the intersection looked following the construction of the roundabout:

Notice that the roundabout is offset to the east, likely because of the existence of the business on the left (Mike’s Fencing), which would have precluded INDOT from lining the roundabout up with State Road 19.

This again raises the question of why INDOT pressed forward with plans for the roundabout.

Why stick a roundabout in the middle of nowhere on a rural road at an intersection that hasn’t been problematic, in a spot where you don’t have space to line it up with the roadway?

This aerial photo below shows the curvature of the roadway on the approach to the roundabout a bit better. State Road 19, which is straight as a stick otherwise, veers to the east at the approach to the roundabout:

Moudy says it’s not only the curve to the right that could have been an issue, but the lack of curbing.

“At this particular roundabout, there’s no curbing at all, so it’s very easy to not be lined up exactly right,” he says.

But…he says there haven’t been a lot of accidents since the roundabout was built in 2015.

“There just have not been and the people have adapted rather well,” he says.

But it could be, he acknowledges, that the people who travel it every day have adapted to the change, but that the design of the roundabout is problematic for those who aren’t from the area, and not used to coming through this intersection.

The driver, Zachery Potts, is not from Elkhart County, but from St. Joseph County, the next county over, to the west.

“There’s so many things,” says Moudy. “They had been on the road since early in the morning, they were maybe in a spirited discussion. There are so many different things that could have gone into it. I can’t say it’s strictly the design of the roundabout, but it is something that I think the state might want to look at.”

He says a couple of local Farm Bureau members have written to the Indiana Department of Transportation, asking the agency to investigate whether the design of the intersection could have contributed to the crash that killed Walorski, Potts, Emma Thomson and Edith Schmucker.

“We’re not saying that it definitely had cause and effect, but it would definitely be worthwhile to look at, just to make sure there’s not something we could do to prevent any further accidents,” says Moudy.