Jason Brengeo said he feels the pain of driving on Ridge Road in Pasco County.

  • Viewer Jason Brengeo reports problem signals on Ridge Road
  • County says drivers who text at stoplight aren't helping
  • Officials working on 2 out-of-sync lights

"The stretch of road by (U.S. Highway) 19 and Ridge Road — those lights are incorrectly timed, coming from both directions," Brengeo said. "It barely lets four or five cars pass on any given day."

Brengeo told us about five other Ridge Road intersections where the signals don't seem to work well.

According to the county, it will have a hard time fixing the problem. That's because of driver behavior.

The culprit? Texting. While stopped at the light, many drivers go right to their phones and don't notice when the light turns green.

Using a turn lane as an example, if three seconds go by without a car passing the sensor, the signal thinks there's no more traffic, and the next red cycle starts.

There are two signals on Brengeo's list that are out of sync, according to David Skrelunas of Pasco County Traffic Management.

"Ridge at Regency and Ridge at Congress are not complete yet," he said. "We are still running fixed time. This means there is no vehicle detection at the moment."

Those will come back online after work in those spots is complete, Skrelunas said.

Brengeo said there is also a location that needs a signal: Ridge Road at the Home Depot.

"A lot of the drivers don't obey the speed limit, so they're coming in either direction in excess of 50 mph," he said. "I've seen a lot of accidents there."

According to the county, there is already a signal very close by at Little Road, and adding another so close would slow people down.

The solution may be to close the intersection — meaning, only allow right turns from the businesses on either side. That’s called channelizing the intersection, and it has worked well in other spots to prevent cross-traffic crashes.