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Local resident takes on bureaucracies for
traffic light at deadly intersection Edgefielddaily.com web posted May 5, 2005 This is a two part series. Part two will be posted Friday May 6 Part 1 Saundra Curry is not afraid to take on the government and says she has been doing so for about a year. Her grievance with them is trying to get a traffic light installed at the intersection of Bettis Academy Road and Highway 25, an intersection she says has cost too many people their lives, many being neighbors or friends.  “Mary Ann Young was killed right there,” said Mrs. Curry
pointing to
the intersection which is in plain view of her front porch, “and over
there is where Charlie Tillman died”. Curry asks in a recent letter to
SCDOT District Engineering Administrator Phillip Brooks, “how many more
lives must be lost before you hear us?”Curry attended the Edgefield County Council meeting May 3, 2005 asking for help from the county in trying to have a traffic signal placed at the intersection. Council agreed there was a problem with the intersection but the intersection is under the control of SC Department of Transportation but would try to see who “next in line above Brooks” was. However Curry says she is done with the “run around” and is pushing forward. She has written a letter to SCDOT and hand delivered copies to the council, Howard Gibson of building and planning, as well as mailing copies to all her area representatives today. “They’re not done with me yet,” Curry said while showing a stack of documents she has gathered on the issue. In an April 5, 2001 letter from Administrator Brooks concerning the intersection he states, “during the count period,” there were, “a number of problems for trucks negotiating this intersection.” He continued by giving examples of blocked traffic and people driving on the shoulder of the roads to get around tie ups. The accident history at that time indicated 15 reported accidents, six of which could have been avoided with a traffic light and five of which had occurred in the preceding 16 months. As a result of the study SCDOT installed two left turn lanes in July of 2004 to alleviate the traffic problem. That, says Curry, “has just made it more dangerous.” She pointed out how traffic flows through the intersection. “The trucks still tie up the road. When somebody is turning right these trucks move over into the turn lane to come around and when they pass the turning car, they are in the oncoming lane,” she said. Since the 2001 study there have been an additional nine accidents, four of which were trucks striking stopped vehicles for a total of 24 accidents in the last ten years, many of which involves fatalities. It is this information that Curry says demands action on the part of the government.  Edgefield Daily.com took a few minutes after our
interview with Saundra
Curry to watch the traffic as it passed through the intersection. The
constant flow of tractor trailer trucks, most of the time in lines of
two or three, and once we counted five; do not heed the suggested 35
MPH sign leading up to the area. Just as Mrs. Curry had stated we
watched as several different people would slow to make a turn the
trucks, and cars as well, would swerve into the turn lane to go around
and indeed stayed in that lane well past the intersection, clearly in
the path of oncoming traffic.We even got to witness one close call when two cars were making right and left turns. The turn lane was occupied by one car waiting for oncoming traffic to clear and the right lane to the slowing car making a right turn, and traffic behinds resulted in the sound of several squealing tires and brakes. The traffic through the area exceeds the posted limit. We took time to travel Highway 25 both north and southbound “flowing” with the traffic and most transfer trucks went through the intersection at 60-65 MPH in either direction we traveled behind them monitoring their speed. It was no different with regular traffic. However the heavy traffic was a majority of the big rigs. Highway 25 being a main trucking route and this high concentration of big trucks, fast speeds, a known problem intersection, and school children and busses is a recipe for disaster according to Saundra Curry. “Something is going to happen one day,” she said, “and it’s going to be ugly.” Return to Main Page
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