A highway sign that one expert called "potentially a killer" is coming down.

The sign at the HOV left-hand exit from I-75 where a bus crash killed seven people last year will be replaced, according to state plans.

Experts say left-hand exits are rare, so road signs have to prepare drivers carefully for them.

Georgia's HOV signs weren't up to the job, officials with the federal National Transportation Safety Board said at a meeting July 8.

Now they will be replaced.

At the urging of the Federal Highway Administration, in a recommendation last year, the Georgia Department of Transportation put new HOV signs out to bid last month and might have a contract signed by Aug. 1. The job is to be finished by March 31, 2010.

The job is to replace all HOV lane signs on metro Atlanta interstate highways.

Virginia-based sign expert Fred Hanscom criticized the overhead sign at the Northside Drive HOV exit mouth as potentially dangerous because it points HOV drivers up the ramp to "Northside Drive," but doesn't say "exit," and nowhere along the road until the exit mouth is there any indication that keeping left can mean exiting the highway.

Smaller signs posted on the ramp said "exit" and "stop ahead."

Investigators say the bus driver for the Bluffton University baseball team, driving south on I-75, was confused by the signs and mistook the exit ramp for an HOV through lane. The bus crossed Northside Drive, crashed into the barrier wall and flipped back onto the highway below. The team was headed to Florida for a game in March 2007.

When the overhead sign at that exit is replaced, DOT drawings show it will have more noticeable coloring, like regular exit guide signs, and the words "exit" and "left." It also will be accompanied this time by another type of sign that was part of the original exit design.

The overhead sign was originally designed to hang next to a "pull-through" sign pointing interstate through drivers to the HOV through lane. Georgia sign engineers, under a strict deadline in 1995 and facing sign pole limitations, left the pull-through sign off.

Federal recommendations made after the bus crash include a pull-through sign at the exit. Georgia officials at the time said they would comply with the recommendations as much as possible, but the pole for the pull-through sign could still be a hitch.

The new DOT bid drawings show the pull-through sign will indeed go up at the exit, and DOT spokesman David Spear said it will hang with the Northside Drive sign on a sign pole stretching all the way across the highway.