OGDEN, Utah — Employees at an Ogden business are tired of seeing accidents and close calls at a nearby intersection, with the final straw being the death of a motorcyclist on Monday.
Those working at Valley Glass at 202 21st Street say something needs to change, saying there’s a number of issues with the intersection, including only two stop signs and an unembellished crosswalk.
"People don’t know how to stop, or they do know how to stop but they don’t know if it’s a 4-way or not a 4-way," explained Matthew Olsen.
With nearby Davinci Academy bringing a lot of foot traffic, many want to see the intersection become a higher priority for the city of Ogden.
Monday afternoon, everyone's nightmare became a reality as 64-year-old Bret Etterlein was on his motorcycle when a southbound truck stopped at the sign and fatally struck him in the intersection.
"That one really hit me," said Olsen. "With him being 64 years old, it kind of touched me very emotionally."
Olsen tried to help stop Etterlein's bleeding, but the motorcyclist died at the hospital.
"Later that night, after I calmed down, calmed my nerves, I was trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t fall asleep because I needed somebody to hear this," he said.
Olsen wrote a letter to the city, something his coworker, Brogan White, has done the same many times.
"We hear the brakes screeching and the horns honking regularly," said White. "So there are a lot of near-misses on a daily basis."
FOX 13 News witnessed a few close calls in the short time spent there Wednesday.
According to Ogden police, there have only been four reported accidents in the past five years with two in 2019, one in 2021 and this week's fatal crash.
White believes the data reporting must be off.
"If you ask any person that works at this shop, we can all, off the top of our head, count more than six crashes that we’ve been here during business hours for," he explained. "So we can only imagine how many more happen that we don’t witness."
It appeared that city employees were studying the intersection with a drone Wednesday afternoon and White says they’ve been told a stoplight could be coming.
"They don’t have a timeline that they can tell us, so that could be years and to us, that seems like a lot of unnecessary accidents," White said.
A spokesperson with the city says they have recently installed stoplights two blocks north and two blocks south of the intersection, and do intend to install a light there after completing traffic studies.
