The state has no plans to add a traffic light or lower the speed limit at the entrance to the East Hills Business Park, the scene of several injury accidents in recent years.

In fact, the state says faster, nonstop traffic can be safer.

“We’ve gone out and looked at it and done the studies, and everything they’ve recommended from our bureau of traffic engineering is that we leave it as is,” said Joe Blubaugh, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

In recent years, people who work in the park have pressed for ways to calm traffic on Kansas Highway 10, especially traffic coming into the city from the east.

But dropping the speed limit isn’t the answer, Blubaugh said. He said the department actually boosted the speed limit there from 55 mph to 65 mph in the late 1990s as a way to keep people moving faster.

The idea, Blubaugh said, was to bring the speed limit into line with how people already were driving.

Blubaugh said a 1997 study, when the speed limit was 55 mph, showed that most drivers were going about 68 mph.

“You’re always going to have some people that are going to follow the speed limit,” he said. “What you end up with is a group of people doing 55 and a lot of people doing 68 to 70. It’s that differential in speed that can actually cause more problems.”

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A 2000 study done after the speed limit increased to 65 mph found most drivers were going about 70 mph, Blubaugh said.

He said that’s a success.

“We brought people together on their average speed,” he said.

Blubaugh said a traffic light would create congestion and might lead to more wrecks because people wouldn’t expect it.

“A traffic signal doesn’t keep somebody from blowing through a light,” he said.

Before Wednesday’s wreck, which sent three people to the hospital, there had been only one crash at the intersection this year, police said. Blubaugh said the rate of accidents there isn’t especially high, but they tend to be severe when they happen.

One idea discussed in the past is an interchange with merging lanes, similar to those farther east on K-10. Blubaugh said the department might recommend one as part of an upcoming expansion of K-10, but there’s no guarantee there would be money to build it.

Until that happens, people like Sauer-Danfoss employee Jay Hunt will keep using extra caution to turn across westbound traffic when coming to work.

“I know some people coming in from the east are usually moving pretty fast,” he said. “I wait. I’m not going to take any chances.”