Cars crash at Grove & Benvenue in Wellesley, no injuries reported
Swellesley reader RW shared photos from a 3-vehicle collision at the intersection of Grove Street and Benvenue St in Wellesley from just before 1pm.
I’d actually been through the intersection myself a couple of hours earlier, so had fresh in my mind the challenge of looking for oncoming traffic from Grove when heading west across the busy street from Benvenue.
According to the Wellesley Police, 1 of the motorists had stopped at the stop sign on Benvenue and then proceeded and did not see the vehicle traveling on Grove. Vehicles then collided. No injuries were reported.
January looks to be a rather average month for collisions in Wellesley based on crashes reported by the police in recent years. Last January, 41 crashes were reported—more crashes were reported in 7 other months.
Wellesley Police Lt. Scott Showstead said the town’s Traffic Committee has assigned “private traffic engineers to study the intersection twice over the past 5 years (2021 and 2023), once during the COVID lockdowns and again after when traffic returned to a more normal level. Both times the study indicated that a 4-way stop/traffic signal was not warranted for the intersection based upon [the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Device] and state standards. After the last study, two new signs were added, prior to the existing stop signs on Benvenue, indicating that a stop sign was ahead. The Traffic Committee and DPW Park and Tree also worked with the resident on the southwest corner of the intersection to remove some vegetation on their private property to facilitate better sight-lines when looking south on Grove from Benvenue.”
The data from the engineers study in February 2023 referenced 4 crashes per year 2014-2016, 1 crash in 2017, no crashes in 2018, 1 crash in 2019, 1 crash in 2020, 2 crashes in 2021, and 3 crashes in 2022. There were actually 4 crashes in January 2023, which was considered an anomaly, Showstead said.
