ATLANTA — Three crashes in three weeks have killed three workers on the side of Georgia roads who were just doing their job.
On Thursday, there were two fatalities in two separate crashes on I-85.
The first happened in Walton County after an Acura hit a worker measuring the roadway.
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The second happened around 3 p.m. near the airport when a car went off the roadway and hit two Georgia Department of Transportation contractors, killing one worker and sending another to the hospital.
The collisions come less than three weeks after a GDOT worker was hit and killed on Ga. 400 while installing signs.
“This crash did not have to happen,” Maurice Raines, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, told Channel 2’s Michael Doudna.
“It’s even worse, I think, when someone’s just doing their job, and they’re not even in a car,” Rachel Galotti, VP of Nathan’s Driving School, said.
For 40 years, Nathan’s Driving School has been in operation around the metro. Galotti says folks need to slow down when there is construction or people working. This gives every driver more reaction time.
“Cars move so fast in just a matter of seconds. If you’re going 70 miles per hour, every second your car’s moving 100 feet,” Galotti said.
It’s also the law. Law enforcement enforces laws ranging from speed limits to distracted driving to the state’s move-over law. However, they know enforcement only goes so far.
“You know, a trooper or an officer stops a speeder, somebody else is going by speeding. You stop somebody for not being buckled, and somebody else goes by unbuckled. You stop someone for being distracted, and somebody else goes by distracted. We cannot do it alone,” Raines said.
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The results of these crashes can be devastating.
“That’s a call that you never want to get,” Wilson Fuller said.
It’s a call Fuller knows too well. In 2023, his brother, Toby Bowden, responded to a crash on I-85 in Coweta County when an impaired driver slammed into him.
“I’m sitting in a truck right now that we had built, dedicated to him. So yes, I miss him every day,” Fuller said.
Since then, Fuller says his family has been without the glue that holds it together. He says he knows the pain three other families are feeling after three deadly crashes.
“It means you’re going to have kids growing up without fathers. You’re going to have spouses that never got a chance to start a family because they were taken too soon ,” Fuller said.
So, Fuller is begging drivers to slow down and move over—to protect themselves—and save lives.
“The more room in between you and that individual, the better chances we have to go home alive,” Fuller said.
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