ST. CHARLES COUNTY — When Leonard Sunderhuse worked as a carpenter building new homes along Highway DD, the narrow, two-lane road provided a disturbing soundtrack of squealing tires, crunching metal and breaking glass.

So Sunderhuse wasn't surprised when police told him where the Volvo had crashed.

Or that his 16-year-old daughter was dead.

"Once they said the crash was on DD, I already knew," he said.

Highway DD, which curves around the Busch Wildlife Area toward St. Charles County's popular wine country in Augusta and Defiance, is among the most dangerous roads of its kind in the state, officials say.

With no shoulders, steep roadside embankments and an accident rate twice the state average for two-lane highways without shoulders, DD has become a road to ruin.

"The road is unforgiving," said Rick Massey, New Melle fire chief, whose department has responded to many of the 140-plus crashes on DD in the last five years. A moment of inattention can lead to disaster, Massey said.

Traffic along DD has risen dramatically in the last decade because the road cuts through a section of St. Charles County that has enjoyed rapid residential development.

At least five new subdivisions with space for hundreds of homes have begun construction near the highway. Frontier Middle School — which now has 1,100 students — opened on DD in 2005, and a new elementary school near Sommers Road is set to open next fall.

"To put a school on one end and subdivisions on the other without fixing the road in-between is just wrong," said Sunderhuse, whose daughter Elise was killed Sept. 3. She was the fifth fatality in five years from crashes on DD.

Elise was riding in a Volvo that veered off the road and slammed into a brick subdivision sign. Police said the driver, also 16, lost control because she overcorrected when her car went off the right side of the highway. Both girls were wearing seat belts.

Sunderhuse, 46, of Wentzville, said his daughter had put off getting a license because she was nervous about driving. Elise and the driver were best friends, he said, and crashed on their way to a video club meeting at Fort Zumwalt West High School.

"Elise was really artsy and into music," he said. "She liked to play the piano and take funny pictures of herself and her friends."

Dave Wiecher, 40, who lives in the Ridgefield Farms subdivision where the teens crashed, said the latest accident has spurred residents to call legislators about improving the road's safety.

"If this area is going to continue to have the growth that we're having, something has to give," he said. "The state is going to have to do something."

Cheryl Coleman, 41, who lives across the highway from Wiecher, is so upset about the road's condition, she started a petition drive to push lawmakers to speed up improvements to DD before another person is killed.

"We're all living our lives in fear out here, and that's no way to live," she said.

SHOULDERS, SPEED LIMITS

The state has plans in the next two years to build paved shoulders along a one-mile stretch of DD from Highway 40 south to Frontier Middle School, said Jim Gremaud, area engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation in St. Charles County. Gremaud said it will take several months before the design is finished and to determine how the project might affect underground utilities.

"It'll definitely be done by 2011 sometime," Gremaud said. "There's an outside chance it could be done in 2010, but I wouldn't bet on it."

The lanes are between 10 and 11 feet wide in both directions, Gremaud said. Adding shoulders will improve safety for the nearly 6,000 vehicles that drive it daily. Traffic data show that's more than double the number of vehicles using that stretch of DD in 2004. The new shoulders will end at Frontier because traffic volume dips in half south of the school.

MoDOT also plans to add two turn lanes to DD at Sommers Road next year, where the new elementary school is going in.

In late 2007, the state tried another tack — reducing the speed limit to 50 mph from 55 on some sections. And last spring, state troopers got $13,500 toward extra speed enforcement on the highway.

"The police presence has been out there a little more, but in their defense, there's really nowhere for them to sit or to pull someone over," Wiecher said.

Coleman said a combination of road improvements and enforcement will probably be needed to change things. Several repavings have created a dropoff on the edge of the road, she said.

"If you go off the road, you're down to the axle, and there's no recovering from that," Coleman said.

RURAL LIFELINE

For many motorists, DD is a path to county parks, the Katy Trail and wine country. Owners of some of Augusta's wineries say they have concerns about DD and embrace the state's plan to widen it.

"Anything that helps our customers get home and stay safe, we'd support it," said Chuck Dressel, owner of the Mount Pleasant Winery in Augusta.

Wiecher believes the wineries are drawing more weekend visitors and increasing the traffic on DD.

"That's great that everybody's coming out there to spend their money, but I think the roads aren't able to handle the volume," he said.

In addition to more traffic, motorists on DD have to contend with deer, blinding sun and heavy truck traffic to and from a quarry, Wiecher said.

Safety concerns about DD have led state Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, to host a town hall meeting later this month in New Melle to discuss ways to urge the state to move quickly.

Rupp said he is frustrated that MoDOT hasn't improved many of Missouri's rural highways sooner but recognizes that budget problems have delayed such projects.

"I've been trying to get MoDOT to pay attention to these rural lettered highways for years," he said.

In the meantime, Highway DD's condition is causing Lynn Tracy, 51, of Defiance, to consider moving from the area because she worries about her teenage daughters who recently got their drivers licenses.

"There is no experience that can prepare you for meeting a car that's a little over the line on that hill when the shoulder on your side is missing," she said.

Tracy said one of her daughters recently asked her whether she would more likely survive a head-on crash on DD or swerving off the highway and flipping over or hitting a tree.

"If that question doesn't put a chill down the spine of the guys with the checkbooks for road improvements, they have no souls," Tracy said.