Business owners along dangerous stretch of Omaha highway call on city for traffic solution

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – An Omaha business owner will start the new year trying to clean up a mess left by a drunk driver in 2024.

Another building on the well-trafficked, high-speed stretch of road along Northwest Radial Highway has suffered damage and repairs have to be made.

Right across the street, Byron O’Dowd is still trying to get his building repaired near 50th and NW Radial. First Alert 6 spoke with Byron back in May after a drunk driver left the road and crashed a car into his business, causing major damage. Byron says the driver didn’t have insurance.

“We’re dealing with that right now, I’ve got an attorney that’s supposed to be handling that,” Byron said.

Byron had planned to move his vacuum service and sales business from south 13th Street to his late brother’s location on NW Radial, but he still has a mess to clean up here, and someone made things worst by tagging his building.

Byron says he has a crew hired to do the repairs when they find the time.

“Since this past year, the weather’s been so bad in all the other little towns, most of the companies have all been really busy,” Byron said. “They’ve got bigger jobs to do, so when they get time, I hope they can come over and get this taken care of because it’s ugly.”

Other business owners in the area say this stretch of road is scary.

Nate Crump has a barbershop on the corner and he says traffic moves much to fast along NW Radial. Nate believes a better-timed traffic signal would help slow things down.

“If we had this red light red more often, it would slow the traffic down,” Nate said. “If you look at the traffic now, the time we’ve been out here, the light hasn’t turned one time.”

Byron says something has to be done, because drivers don’t even pick up their car parts when they crash into the walls.

“I’ve been trying to get the city to come down here and either put up a guard rail or something across the side here, because if you go down here a little further about one a week or twice a week, somebody is hitting these poles.

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