First, there is the screeching, rubber shredding on pavement, often followed by an ominous, split-second silence. Then comes the echoing thud - metal crumpling, glass shattering - the awful sound of impact.
The scene plays out so often in front of her house that Jay Musto now has a well-honed routine: When she hears the jolting sounds, often in the middle of the night, she grabs her cellphone, runs toward the crash, hitting the speed-dial button for 911 on the way. The police ask whether they need to send an ambulance, which she says is required all too often.
"It's a slaughter," says Musto, 34, who has lived on the block 12 years. "It's so bad, you can't believe it."
The corner of American Legion Highway and Walk Hill Street, a nondescript pocket of Roslindale surrounded by a cemetery, nature preserve, and strip malls, has become the city's most dangerous intersection.
In the past four years, police have received 33 calls for people injured in 97 crashes at the corner, more than at any other city intersection. Neighbors said they think the numbers are higher. Three people died there between 2002 and 2004, including a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man.
For years, neighbors have clamored for city officials to do something to improve the intersection, a stretch of road where a straightaway meets an urban area and drivers often cruise at highway speeds as they race yellow lights on Walk Hill Street. The area has long been notorious, police and neighbors say, as a haven for late-night drag races.
"We called it Kamikaze Way," said Linda Mazzella, who owns Walk Hill Florist and has lived in the neighborhood for decades. "You would take your life in your hands crossing the road. You needed to run. People just don't pay attention to the lights."
Efforts to improve the intersection were stymied for more than a decade by a conflict between the city and state, which had money available for improvements in road and bridge programs run by the Massachusetts Highway Department. But the state offered the money on condition that the city agrees to widen lanes and eliminate parking on American Legion Highway, said Jim Gillooly, deputy commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department.
"We didn't want to worsen the problems by using their cookbook approach and making it more like a highway," Gillooly said. "Widening the lanes would have increased speed, and that's the last thing we wanted to do."
The neighbors' pleading to upgrade the intersection might finally produce results.
Last year, the city decided to bypass the state and revamp the intersection with money from
Several months ago, transportation officials launched a $9 million project - the largest of its kind in Boston - to replace the intersection's traffic lights, create turning lanes, resurface the roads, heighten curbs, and add street lights, bike lanes, and new trees. They also plan to add traffic-monitoring cameras.
The project is about halfway done, but problems remain. Last month, there was another serious crash: Seven people were injured at the intersection when a sport utility vehicle struck an MBTA bus and another vehicle, after the bus had stopped to pick up passengers on American Legion. Police cited the SUV driver for driving to endanger and unsafe or improper passing, a problem neighbors have long complained about.
"It's not the highway that's the problem - it's the people," said Florence Jackson Princiotta, who has lived in the neighborhood 21 years and has been lobbying for nearly as long to have the intersection improved. "People think it's an expressway. They bully you out of the way, by driving up to your bumper. There's no courtesy."
She and others said they are accustomed to hearing several crashes a day. "It can be a nightmare to drive here," Princiotta said. "It's like bumper cars. You don't know if you're going to get hit from the left or the right."
In an effort to clamp down on scofflaws and other bad drivers, Boston police Captain Frank Armstrong, who supervises officers in the area, has posted extra patrols. He said about 10 percent of about 12,000 tickets the officers in his district write are for violations at the intersection.
He blamed the high number of crashes on drivers disregarding the 30 miles-per-hour speed limit on American Legion, which is strewn with potholes and remains poorly lit at night. "We can put cameras, all sorts of things there," he said. "But if guys speed and blow the red light, there isn't much you can do to stop that."
With the new traffic lights to be installed in the coming months and the rest of the repairs slated to be completed this summer, the neighbors are hoping they will no longer have to make 911 calls in the middle of the night. Until then, they're relying on signs urging drivers to slow down.
Dora Calisi, whose family has owned a flower shop on the corner since 1949, blamed city officials for not acting sooner.
"They've known about these problems for years," she said. "Why did it take so long?"
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.
