TAMPA, Fla. — Rush hour on any roadway in Tampa Bay can be tough, but one exit ramp on the Selmon Expressway frequently backs up traffic.

Damian Bisagni, a driver, says the exit ramp westbound on the Selmon Expressway at Plant Avenue is outright dangerous.

“I look into my rear view mirror and see where drivers are slamming their brakes last minute, veering left and right to keep from hitting me or other cars behind me at a standstill,” said Bisagni.

Cars exit the expressway coming down the ramp but can't see the expressway itself.   

During rush hour, exit traffic backs up from the ramp onto the mainline lanes of the Selmon, and that's when the trouble starts. 

“I have almost been hit several times,” said Bisagni. “As I slow down every morning, I fear that I am going to be rear ended.”

He'd like to see the ramp expanded to two lanes.  Currently one lane comes off the expressway, then splits to two as traffic nears the signal at Plant Avenue.

For that answer, we need to go back to the beginning. 

"We opened in 1973, but we started in the 1960s,” said Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Spokesperson Sue Chrzan. “So the standards that we used back in the 60s are totally different than our modern standards."

If the Selmon were built today, the ramps would be longer. They would likely run along the frontage of the expressway, and there would be plenty of room to get on and off.

That's not the reality of life on the Selmon.  

But that doesn't mean the Expressway Authority is going to do nothing.

"We're getting ready to do a project where we're looking at the safety, we're looking at the capacity, and we're looking at all of those things to see what we can improve in the next three to five years," said Chrzan.

That safety study runs from Downtown to the new Selmon extension.

That said, nothing will make that exit safer until drivers pay better attention to driving and less on those things that cause distractions.