Intersection where Pierce major crashed into family needs a stop sign

Intersection where Pierce major crashed into family needs a stop sign | Opinion

Opinion

Intersection where Pierce major crashed into family needs a stop sign | Opinion

Laura Hautala

Fri, December 5, 2025 at 1:00 PM UTC

4 min read

As I read about a traffic collision this summer that involved an off-duty major in the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, several things stood out to me. Most importantly, a family of six was riding in the SUV that the major struck in his pickup when he failed to yield at an intersection. An eight-year-old and his grandmother were injured.

But a distracting phrase kept popping out at me: “Uncontrolled intersection.”

That’s what law enforcement said Chad Dickerson, the pickup driver who is now retired from the sheriff’s department, drove through when he failed to yield to the SUV as it crossed through the intersection from the right.

An uncontrolled intersection is when two roads cross without any sign or signal to guide traffic. It’s basic drivers ed that you must yield to the right when you come to an uncontrolled intersection at the same time as another car.

So it stands to reason that Dickerson should have yielded. But what if he should have stopped altogether? That’s what I wondered as I looked at the intersection in question, 288th Street East and 132nd Avenue in Graham, on Google Maps.

What I found: this intersection has no business being uncontrolled. The road that the family in the SUV was traveling down, 288th Street East, is essentially a rural highway. It’s paved in asphalt with a yellow dotted line down the middle. The road Dickerson was driving on — 132nd Avenue East — is residential, unstriped and strewn with gravel where it meets 288th Street. It’s a side street.

A car moves along 288th Street East at the intersection of 132nd Avenue East on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Graham, Wash.

I’m a believer in defensive driving, which calls on everyone to be mindful that drivers in other vehicles can make mistakes. But beyond that baseline, no one driving down that arterial would have any reason to think they must yield to a car crossing from a side street.

The closer I looked at the images of this intersection on Google Maps, the more I became convinced it was a disaster waiting to happen. Shouldn’t there have been a stop sign? I’ve reached out to Pierce County to ask about the intersection, and I haven’t received answers to my questions.

Dickerson was allegedly impaired by alcohol during the collision, which he’s already been deemed at fault for because he didn’t yield. The responsibility lies with him for those actions, though some must still be proven in court (he has pleaded not guilty to two counts of DUI vehicular assault).

But a stop sign is necessary there, and it could have prevented a life-changing car wreck.

This intersection needs stop signs

To state the obvious, traffic signs and signals keep us safe on the road. But more than that, they keep us alert to our surroundings even if we aren’t driving at our best. Drowsy, distracted, unfamiliar or impaired drivers might fail to notice that they’re about to cross a highway from a side street based on context clues alone. A stop sign is harder to miss.

Most likely the county is aware of that. Because at one point, there was a stop sign.

A car moves along 288th Street East past the intersection of 132nd Avenue East on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Graham, Wash. There was no stop sign there that day, but Google Maps shows one present in July 2024.

Now, prepare for things to get confusing. As I used the street view tool on the map, I found a picture from July 2024 showing a stop sign at the intersection to halt northbound traffic. That would have required Dickerson to stop, not just yield. But by the time the collision took place in July 2025, it appeared the stop sign was gone.

The stop sign doesn’t appear to be there in body cam footage after the crash, in which Dickerson can be heard saying there was no stop sign. A sheriff’s deputy can be heard saying Dickerson blew a stop sign, but I found no hint of it in the footage.

Finally, this newspaper’s photographer went to check in early December, and the stop sign was not there.

That’s strange enough. It gets stranger. In those same Google Maps images of the intersection from July 2024, there was no stop sign for traffic heading south on 132nd Avenue East. That means that at the time the photos were taken, drivers on the side street had a stop sign when coming to the main road from one direction, but not from the other.

But now? As of at least this December, there is a stop sign for southbound traffic coming down the side street. We’re back where we started, with only one direction of traffic on a side street stopping as it crosses what is, again, basically a highway. The stop sign has just switched which side of the highway it’s on.

A stop sign stands at the intersection of 288th Street East and the southbound lane of 132nd Avenue East on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Graham, Wash. Google Maps shows there was no stop sign there as of July 2024.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but there should be stop signs in both directions as the side street crosses the main road.

I know that I can make my time spent on the road safer by avoiding alcohol before I drive, getting enough rest, not using my phone and staying calm and alert. But I can’t control what other drivers do, and neither could the family in that SUV. They deserved a stop sign to protect them.

It’s too late to put the brakes on the unfortunate collision that took place this July. But a stop sign could help stop the next one.

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