The Georgia Bulldogs football team celebrated its second straight national championship with a parade on Jan. 14 last year. After a night of drinking downtown, offensive lineman Devin Willock got into an SUV that the UGA Athletic Association had rented, driven by recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy. While racing Willock’s teammate Jalen Carter on Barnett Shoals Road, reaching a speed of 104 miles per hour, LeCroy crashed, killing herself and Willock, and seriously injuring a coworker. She had a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit.
Who is to blame for those deaths—LeCroy? Carter? The bar that served them? UGA for allowing LeCroy to drive the rented vehicle after work hours?—is under litigation. What’s not in dispute is that they were just two among the 21 lives claimed on Athens roads last year.
From 2013–2022, Athens had more than 50,000 car crashes, with 61% occurring on locally owned roads and 39% on state highways, such as Atlanta Highway (Highway 78), Milledge Avenue (15), most of Prince Avenue (15/129), Jefferson Road (129), Commerce Road (441), Highway 29, Lexington Road (78) and the Loop. Those crashes seriously injured more than 1,000 people and killed 121—a number that’s been trending upward in recent years. After ranging from six to 14 for most of the past decade, traffic deaths spiked to 23 in 2021, then fell to 11 in 2022 before spiking again to 21 last year.
It’s not just a local problem. Traffic deaths nationwide were on pace to fall by 3% last year after jumping at the start of the pandemic, according to the most recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, but are likely to top 40,000 for the third year in a row once final data is released. Experts attribute the death toll to smartphones distracting drivers, lack of traffic enforcement, antisocial behaviors picked up during the pandemic, and the growing popularity of taller and heavier trucks and SUVs.
Children, the elderly, people of color and people living in low-income areas are most at risk, according to Athens-Clarke County traffic engineer Tim Griffeth, partially because of lack of investment in certain neighborhoods and partially because if people can’t afford a car or can’t drive, they’re more likely to walk. Pedestrians make up a disproportionately high portion of overall injuries and deaths—in Athens, about a third—as most roads are designed to move cars fast rather than for people to walk or bike.
At a recent town hall meeting hosted by Five Points commissioners John Culpepper, Mike Hamby and Allison Wright, former ACC commissioner Russell Edwards questioned county officials about the high death toll. In particular, he pointed to the stretch of West Broad Street around Alps Road, a seven-lane highway with few crosswalks where pedestrians are frequently killed crossing the street.
ACC Police Chief Jerry Saulters attributed the carnage to speeding, distracted driving and drug use. For example, one man drove into a ditch and hit a tree, he said, which was classified as a traffic fatality, but in fact the driver overdosed on fentanyl. Some pedestrian deaths, Saulters speculated, could be suicides.
Speeding is the No. 1 complaint the ACC Transportation and Public Works Department receives, Griffeth said. “Most people don’t like to hear the fact that the speed you consider unacceptable in your neighborhood, you have probably driven as fast in someone else’s neighborhood,” he said.
Traffic engineers know tricks to get drivers to slow down, and some of those have been incorporated into a new local road safety plan the ACC Commission is expected to adopt next month. Speed tables, curb extensions, pedestrian islands, narrower lanes and flashing beacons at crosswalks all encourage motorists to step off the gas and are relatively cheap to install. In particular, Griffth said he’s a big fan of roundabouts, which reduce fatal crashes by 90% and injuries by 76%.
“Designing safe road systems includes designing communities for easy access to core needs and services within walking and biking distance,” he told commissioners at a Feb. 13 work session. “Fewer car trips is the top safety strategy.”
Separately, the commission has already adopted a complete streets policy and a Vision Zero resolution setting a goal eliminating traffic deaths, and county officials are working with GDOT to improve state highways. The county is also reforming the process for installing traffic-calming measures so that neighborhood residents don’t have to apply or pay for them if their street meets certain criteria. In addition, ACCPD has a crash reconstruction team. “We look at every single accident; we look at what was the cause and what we can do to stop that,” Saulters said.
The local road safety plan, as the name implies, focuses solely on local roads, where the ACC government faces no obstacles to making changes other than money. ACC Bicycle/Pedestrian Safety Coordinator Daniel Sizemore identified the “high-injury network,” the local roads that are most dangerous. They include: Timothy Road, Epps Bridge Road, Barnett Shoals Road, Newton Bridge Road, Athena Drive, Macon Highway, Gaines School Road, Alps Road, West Broad Street, Vinson Drive, Old West Broad Street and Tallassee Road.
About 62% of wrecks on local roads happened at intersections, and in 41% the driver was distracted, Sizemore said, which are higher numbers than in other Georgia cities. Impaired driving has declined recently, he said, but that hasn’t been reflected in the number of injuries or deaths. Several commissioners asked about speeding; it’s a problem, Sizemore said, but no more so than anywhere else.
The plan’s overarching goal is to cut deaths and serious injuries on local roads in half, from 74 in 2021 to 37 in 2026, with the eventual goal of eliminating them entirely by 2032. Within the next two years, the plan aims to cut crashes at intersections by 10%, collisions with cyclists and pedestrians by 10%, crashes involving distracted drivers by 10% and crashes involving impaired drivers by 30%. Some commissioners, such as Hamby, called for more ambitious goals.
A separate plan covering higher-speed highways will be introduced to the mayor and commission later this year, according to Griffeth.
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