When Susan Zimmer gets in her car every morning, she worries she may not make it home.
Zimmer has lived in north Phoenix for five decades, almost her entire life, and she's lived in her neighborhood less than a mile off the Loop 101 for the past six years.
Inside the community, drivers are accommodating to each other. Once they roll past the stop sign to exit, Zimmer says it becomes every driver for themselves.
"So many people in this complex alone have been in accidents," said Zimmer.
That includes her friend, Kristee Wittrig, who was recently struck by another driver who she believed was both distracted by a device and confused by the road markings.
"The guy in the next lane didn't realize it was a left turn lane and he smacked me broadside and just spun me around, just spun me right into the brick wall there, into the concrete wall," Wittrig recalled.
The crash at Loop 101 and 7th Avenue left her with back pain and thousands of dollars in damage to her vehicle, but Wittrig says she's happy to be alive.
Others haven't been so lucky. The neighborhood's HOA president was killed by a drunk driver in November at the exact intersection, a crash report obtained by ABC15 says.
Zimmer reached out to ABC15's Operation Safe Roads to ask for help in spotlighting the issues she's seen in the area around 7th Avenue and Loop 101.
It's not just people in the neighborhood who experience problems with the area along 7th Avenue. On the way to shoot video for the story, ABC15's team witnessed what could have been a bad accident near 7th Avenue and Rose Garden Lane as a truck swerved around their vehicle and ran a red light.
The number of vehicles in the area has made crashes feel more likely, Zimmer said.
"Now it's just congested all the time," she explained. "The only safe time is midnight 'til four o'clock in the morning."
Meanwhile, the neighborhood isn't too hopeful things will change for the better, as a new apartment complex is expected to open soon directly across the street.
So far, Zimmer said, no changes to traffic patterns have been introduced to accommodate for the hundreds of new area residents.
"The traffic is going to get more severe, more congested," Wittrig said. "I anticipate there's going to be more accidents at that intersection at 7th Avenue and Beardsley."
Wittrig and Zimmer only hope the next crash will not involve someone else they know.
Of the drivers, Wittrig said she can't understand their thought processes: "They could possibly take a life, and then how are they going to feel because they didn't wait five minutes or less [at a stop light]?"
The City of Phoenix encourages residents who have concerns about road conditions or safety risks to contact its street department about a solution. You can contact the Phoenix Street Transportation Department at (602) 262-6284 or StreetsP@phoenix.gov.