SAINT JOSEPH, Ill. (WCIA) — The Illinois Department of Transportation is installing new stop signs at a dangerous intersection in Champaign County.

IDOT officials said drivers should avoid the area on Monday when crews will be working at the intersection of Royal and Saint Joe Roads.

People who live and work around there say it has always been dangerous. Now, extra safety precautions will be added. For some people, it’s a move that’ll take some getting used to. Royal Road is as busy as it gets for some people in the rural areas near Saint Joseph.

Jacki Wilcoxin manages Premier Cooperative in Royal. They take grain from farmers with trucks flowing in and out all day long. She said it may be a minor annoyance for the truck drivers.

“Just one more stop to make,” Wilcoxin said. “Try to get as many loads in as possible in a day.”

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Jan Huls has lived near the intersection of Royal Road and St. Joe Road for more than 60 years.

“I won’t say a lot of wrecks,” she said, “but I’ve seen more than my share in almost every accident out here.”

Huls said the noise pollution is already bad enough, and the stop signs IDOT is installing will make the sounds worse.

“There’s going to be a lot of noise. As you can tell when you’re sitting out here, there’s times when we can’t even talk,” she said. “I’m not going to like the semis stopping out in front of my house. And there will be sometimes there will be two or three of them because that’s how they travel.”

The intersection has always been a two-way stop. IDOT said the new four-way stop should help with crashes. There’s been eight of them in the past eleven years.

“There’s many times you see cars come flying up and you don’t know if they’re going to stop or not,” Wilcoxin said. “So, you almost come to a stop anyways.”

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Huls said it’s the northbound and southbound cars that get into trouble because they don’t see the cross-traffic doesn’t stop.

“There was a lady coming from the north and she pulled out in front of a truck,” Huls said. “And they said the truck, they thought, was going somewhere between 80 and 90 miles an hour.”

Although it may be a little louder at Huls’s house, she thinks safety should come first.

“That’s all we can hope for,” Huls said. “We’re going to get some signs. I don’t like it. I don’t want it — but I’m going to get it, so I’m going to hope for the best.”

IDOT says the new, advanced stop signs will have orange flags attached. Pavement rumble strips will also be added to Royal Road. IDOT also says the new 4-way stop shouldn’t create much traffic build-up.

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