The intersection of Deckerville Road and Hurds Corner Road in Tuscola County was the scene of a serious crash on the afternoon of April 4th — the same intersection that has been at the center of one of the region’s most significant road safety disputes for years. Michigan State Police from the Caro Post are investigating the collision, which left five people with serious injuries and one passenger in critical condition.
Six people were involved in total. A two-year-old child in one of the vehicles was treated for minor injuries and later released.
What Happened
According to troopers, a 20-year-old woman from Owendale was stopped at the stop sign on Hurds Corner Road. She entered the intersection and collided with a westbound pickup truck driven by a 20-year-old man from Mayville.
The force of the impact was severe. The pickup struck the passenger side of the car, sending it off the roadway and into the front porch of a home located at the northwest corner of the intersection. The collision did not stay on the road — it reached into someone’s property with enough force to damage a residential structure.
All three people inside the car — the driver and two male passengers, ages 23 and 21 — were seriously injured and transported to a local hospital. The pickup driver was also seriously hurt and taken for treatment. A 21-year-old woman riding in the truck suffered critical injuries and was transported to a hospital outside the area. The two-year-old child who was in the vehicle received treatment for minor injuries and was later released.
The crash remains under active investigation by Michigan State Police.
An Intersection With a Painful History
This is not just any intersection. Deckerville Road and Hurds Corner Road is the exact location where the Putman family lost three members and had three others seriously injured when a semi-truck ran a stop sign. Since that tragedy, Billy Putman has spent years advocating for additional warning signals at this intersection — and five others — arguing that a simple stop sign is not adequate warning for a road that carries the traffic it does.
The Putman family filed legal notice of their intent to sue the Tuscola County Road Commission over the failure to install those safety improvements, naming the road commission, county department heads, Ellington Township, and others. The lawsuit was rooted in a documented pattern of requests for safety upgrades at this intersection being made and not acted upon.
Saturday’s crash — another serious collision at the same stop sign — will inevitably reignite those questions. How many crashes at the same intersection, with the same stop-sign configuration, are needed before the safety analysis changes? The Putman family asked that question years ago. The April 4th crash asks it again.
The Road Commission Hearings Context
The timing of this crash lands in the middle of the Tuscola County Board of Commissioners’ public hearing process on road commission reform. More than 150 people attended the first hearing on April 2nd — two days before this crash — and speakers raised exactly these concerns about the road commission’s failure to respond to documented safety needs. The second required public hearing was held on April 7th, with commissioners weighing options ranging from expanding the road board to transferring its powers entirely to the county commission.
The April 4th crash at Deckerville and Hurds Corner Road happened between those two hearings. Whether the commission’s eventual decision on road board reform will include any accountability for the documented safety failures at this specific intersection remains to be seen. But the proximity in time between a public hearing about road safety failures and another serious crash at the same intersection that has generated years of safety complaints is impossible to ignore.
Six People, One Child, One Critical
It is worth pausing on the human reality of what happened on April 4th. Six people were involved in a collision violent enough to send a car into the porch of a nearby home. Five of them were seriously hurt. One — a 21-year-old woman — is in critical condition at a hospital outside the area. A two-year-old child was in one of those vehicles.
These are young people. The drivers were both 20 years old. The passengers ranged from 21 to 23. The critical patient is 21. The child is two. This crash did not happen on a highway at high speed in poor weather. It happened at a rural intersection on a clear afternoon — the kind of intersection that has had safety concerns raised about it repeatedly and formally for years.
The investigation by Michigan State Police is ongoing. Details about contributing factors, citations, and the full sequence of events will emerge through that process. But the location of this crash — and its human toll — is a fact that stands entirely on its own, regardless of whatever the investigation ultimately concludes.
For Tuscola County residents following the road safety and road commission reform story, the Michigan State Police Caro Post is the investigating agency and the appropriate contact for questions about the crash investigation’s progress. And for those tracking road safety data and intersection crash histories in Michigan, Michigan’s Traffic Crash Reporting System maintains publicly accessible crash data that documents the history of incidents at specific locations across the state.
