Jury finds ADOT at fault for deadly crash, still no road fix

It's a part of the I-10 you've probably traveled many times, but a segment between Tucson and Phoenix has been the site of several deadly crashes. Now one family is trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"I was like mom what are you doing here, and she said there was an accident," recalls Lindsay Glazer. It was the night before her first day at the University of Arizona when she learned her father, Michael Glazer, and her six-year-old sister, Sydney Glazer, were killed on their trip from Tucson back to southern California.

"The car came at them, and they were thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly."

The car that hit the family van had veered off the eastbound lanes, crossed the median, and entered the westbound lanes.

Lindsay says the 2007 crash still haunts her.

"What if they had left ten seconds later? What if I had hugged them that much longer? What if we'd gone to get food instead? It's like all the what ifs."

"They failed to fix a condition that needed to be fixed and some very good people died," says Glazer's attorney, John Leader. He helped the Glazers sue the state because vehicle barriers were not in place.

A jury found the state at fault for the fatal accident, and awarded the Glazers $7.8 million.

"They're responsibility has always been to provide a reasonably safe roadway," says Leader, "and we had a jury who heard the evidence say they did not provide a reasonably safe roadway"

Nearly five years later the site of the accident, mile post 171, still lacks vehicle barriers. ADOT would not comment on any plans to improve the area because now there is another case.

Just nine months after the Glazers' accident, two others died from a cross over accident at the same location.

"A very nice lady from Tucson and her sister were driving to Phoenix, I think, to go shopping and they lost control of their vehicle and crossed the median and collided with a semi tractor trailer."

Leader intends to prove had vehicle barriers been installed, the car would have never left the roadway, reducing the severity of the crash and possibly preventing their deaths.

Lindsay says something needs to be done now.

"Not even just my father and my six-year-old sister had to die from this but so many more others in recent history," says Lindsay. "That should be looked at and that should be dealt with."

A 2009 report from Fox News ranked that stretch of highway as the third deadliest part of the I-10 with more than 170 people killed there over five years.