FRESNO, Calif. - Changes are now taking place at one of Fresno’s most notorious intersections.
The North Fresno intersection at Friant Road and Shepherd Avenue, known more popularly as “Friant Roulette,” has long motivated locals to advocate for traffic improvements and has even drawn attention internationally thanks to a YouTube channel that has live-streamed multiple accidents there.
City officials recently installed a new traffic signal above the third lane traveling northbound on Friant Road — a lane that previously didn’t have its own signal directly overhead — so that each of the road’s five northbound lanes has its own dedicated signal.
Another change involves shielding a green right-turn arrow so it can be seen only by drivers in the designated right-turn lane.
The improvements are part of $2.5 million that the city allocated toward this intersection through the city's “Pave More Now, Pay Later” infrastructure program.
“The administration asked me what my priorities were… and I told them, ‘Hey, I want to use it on Friant and Shepherd,’” said Nick Richardson, who represents District 6 on the Fresno City Council.
Richardson said the shielding over the green arrow was needed in order to prevent drivers from other lanes mistaking the arrow for their own signal — a claim that many drivers have made after accidents.
“Sometimes people would say, ‘Well, I saw a green light, I saw some green light, and so I decided to speed up and keep going,’” Richardson recalled.
Richardson said the new signal and shielding are just the first steps in a broader plan to improve safety here. Although Richardson acknowledges that crashes cannot be entirely eliminated there, he said the city plans to monitor whether the latest changes lead to a drop in collisions.
“We have about five different steps, that if step one works, and this reduces the collisions there astronomically, we don't need to spend all of the money that we potentially allocated to this project on the project,” Richardson said — and then the money could be spent on improving other intersections.
Possible future changes at this intersection, he said, include widening the median, adjusting turn lanes, and adding a protected right turn lane for vehicles on Friant that are traveling north. Richardson said his office began working with the city's public works department on potential solutions soon after he took office last year.
Dan Wells supports the improvements. For years, the resident near the intersection has documented traffic at the intersection through social media. He said the new additions were necessary to improve the overall safety of the area.
“I believe that added light was an absolute necessity,” Wells said. “80% of the wrecks are from that third lane that didn't have a light above it, and so they now have a light and supposedly are shielded from seeing that green arrow.”
The intersection gained the nickname “Friant Roulette” after a camera that Wells set up in his backyard captured a series of crashes there. He livestreams the intersection 24 hours a day on a channel that’s amassed over 20,000 subscribers and has documented dozens of collisions over several years.
Wells also speaks up in community meetings about the intersection. Wells said the goal of the channel, and his advocacy, has always been to draw attention to the problem and push for improvements.
For now, Wells said the latest changes are a step in the right direction, though he doesn’t feel like the work here is done. He questions some of the planned changes and is skeptical that those higher-dollar items aren’t actually going to prevent crashes and instead might raise other safety concerns.
“We believe that what we have done has contributed greatly to the success of helping to cut down accidents at that intersection,” Wells said. “We've done our job, and we will continue to do so until it's just not warranted any longer.”
