BILLINGS - After three serious crashes, two of them deadly, in the span of one week on Montana Highway 3 north of Billings, those with the Montana Highway Patrol are expressing concern for safety.
The stretch of roadway from Billings to Broadview is a simple two-lane highway running mostly along the prairie, but now questions are being raised over the safety of some of the highway’s legal passing zones.
“We don’t get a lot of calls on this highway,” said Montana Highway Patrol Capt. Eric Gilbert.
Gilbert, who's based in the Billings district, describes this highway as tame with only nine crashes during 2023, and 20 in 2022. He says for the most part, troopers respond to winter slide-offs and cars hitting deer.
But this seemingly deadly week has Gilbert calling it a fluke.
He says the cause behind the three serious crashes over the week in mid-July was driver error. On July 17, an elderly man riding as a passenger in a car that was passing a semi-truck died when the car crashed head-on into oncoming traffic.
Here’s where it gets tricky: The car was passing legally on the road on that day but ran into a blind spot.
Glibert said the crash happened on the roadway near mile marker 14.
“They are already into their pass, by the time they hit that crest right there,” he says. “And then by that time, they can’t see someone coming.”
That crash backed up traffic for miles and the man was airlifted to a Billings hospital, where he died days later.
Those who travel this highway often know the spot.
“You don’t know who’s coming around, passing someone from the other direction,” said Tna Gress, who lives and works in Broadview at Danny’s, the town's lone gas station.
“I always tell everybody, 'drive safe,'” she said.
Gilbert echoes that message but says highway patrol doesn’t decide where to place passing zones.
Instead, the Montana Department of Transportation and local authorities make that determination, according to state law.
MDT did supply some recent crash data for this stretch of Highway 3, showing two crashes at mile marker 14 in 2020, one in July of 2022 in addition to the deadly one from this July.
MTN News is still waiting for a request for clarification from MDT on how a passing lane is decided and the process for changing one.
Which is not a bad idea to investigate, according to Gilbert.
“It never hurts to have somebody come out and take a look at it and do a study on it.”
