Albuquerque resident raises concerns about dangerous roundabout

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A series of traffic structures along Sunset Road in southwest Albuquerque are causing a lot of confusion.

The county says they were installed traffic circles and mini-roundabouts to make people slow down in that residential area. But residents who live there say it’s doing the opposite.

Jacob Chavez lives along Sunset Road and for the second time a car lost control going too fast around the traffic circle and crashed through his fence. 

“We’ve already counted four of five cars going on the opposite side of that roundabout into oncoming traffic because they are too lazy to do a roundabout properly. He’s going what 40 mph, you see that?” said Chavez. 

On Saturday night, he got a surprise in his backyard when a truck hit the traffic circle, lost control and spun into his yard.

“Someone is going to get hurt, and I would hate for it to be a kid or any one of us. I mean that car came feet away from going into my bedroom,” Chavez said.  

This is the second time Chavez has had to replace his fence, and he says complaints to the county are falling flat.

“They promised they would look into it, they’ve done speed tables to do these speed studies and nothing has come about it,” said Chavez. 

“We currently don’t have the funding to implement the recommendations of the study, so we are trying to find some funding for that. We are going to start the design of this and then when we get the funding for construction, we will build it,” said Bernalillo County’s Engineering Program Manager Rodrigo Eichwald.

The county is aware of the multiple complaints, and is working to address them. But they say it’s also on drivers to be more aware and slow down. 

“Really people should be slowing down and following the correct flow of traffic, I believe if people followed it that there wouldn’t be any problems,” said Eichwald. 

During KOB 4’s interview with the county, people were incorrectly driving through these traffic circles and speeding. 

They do plan to go through and replace the reflectors that have been hit by drivers.