ATLANTA — Across Georgia, communities are tackling traffic safety to combat more than 400,000 crashes every year. Channel 2’s Michael Doudna spoke to the Georgia Department of Transportation to identify the riskiest roads and intersections in the state.
Georgia had the fourth most highway deaths in the nation last year.
“It’s stupid, it’s reckless,” said Noah Thomas, the brother of a woman killed on South Hairston Road in DeKalb County. “I don’t think people understand the severity of the machines that we push around every day.”
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In 2022, Thomas’s sister Carilla took a U-turn on South Hairston Rd. when a speeding Tesla slammed into her. It was one of more than 700 crashes near the intersection in the past 10 years.
GDOT does not maintain Hairston Road, but they still collect the data statewide.
And though that road was a local community hotspot for accidents, it wasn’t in the top 100 most dangerous areas in the state.
To rank intersections, GDOT takes every crash report and sorts it by road, crash type, and severity to identify trouble spots.
“That’ll involve targeting specific crash types, whether those crash types are left turn angle crashes, runoff road crashes, or pedestrian crashes,” Ron Knezevich, a GDOT safety engineering manager, said. “We see systemic issues across the entire state on problem roads and non-problem roads.”
His team works to identify the locations that will have the highest return on investment: the best reduction in crashes for the lowest cost interventions.
They use a special metric, known as an ePDO, that accounts for total property damage to assess not just the number of crashes but also how bad they are. Under the system, fatal crashes and incidents with severe injuries get a higher value than crashes with no serious injuries.
The top five metro Atlanta roads with the most crashes:
- Northside Parkway NW: 2,610
- Alpharetta Hwy, Peachtree St: 2,360
- Covington Hwy: 2,232
- Moreland Avenue 2,110
- Candler Road: 2096
The top five metro roads by GDOT’s ePDO ranking:
- Covington Hwy: 17,040.5
- Old National Hwy: 16091.7
- Northside Parkway Northwest: 14380.3
- Moreland Avenue: 14,457.8
- Candler Rd: 13,446.8
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Around the state, officials and engineers use data compiled by GDOT to target community roads and intersections that could be improved.
Improvements to data processing have unlocked new ways to tackle the traffic challenge.
“We try to identify what the crash patterns are that are predominant there, so we can really understand what those localized needs are,” Knezevich said. “You can mitigate certain crash types with different improvements.”
One of the best examples GDOT pointed out was their work on Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy., where they reduced lanes, added a median and created a protected left turn. Combined, those changes reduced pedestrian accidents by 90% at the cost of an extra minute of travel time.
And that could be just the start.
New technology that’s already on the roads in some public service vehicles like firetrucks and ambulances could soon also help cars become traffic-aware.
“This technology is supposed to reduce up to 80% of all unimpaired accidents,” said KSU computer science and electronics professor Billy Kihei. “That’s crazy sauce.”
Kihei’s work merges computer science and electrical design with traffic solutions. His research helps inventors capitalize on new technologies that help process data that once went uncollected or unused.
Kihei showed Doudna the little box that makes it possible for firetrucks and ambulances to automatically get a green light when they need it. He says in the years ahead, consumer versions could be coming that help cars keep track of each other on the road so that they can avoid accidents.
“They’re going to enable cars to talk to each other so they don’t hit each other,” Kihei said.
The hope is that the combination of data and technology will save lives, but GDOT data shows that the biggest factor is still driver behavior.
“We see more reckless driving in Atlanta than we see in other cities within Georgia,” Knezevich said.
And it’s that reckless driving, in Atlanta and in the surrounding metro, that claims the lives of so many drivers every year.
Despite changes in construction, human actions matter just as much and it will take changes to all three to help save lives.
“If you don’t have to go that fast, don’t go that fast,” Thomas said. “If it’s not an emergency, please, because you can hurt other people; you can hurt people’s families. You can hurt your family.”
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