Some people are surprised to learn that our Traffic Center at 95.5 WSB is 24 hours. Someone even recently asked me, “Wait. There is traffic at night?” Oh yes. Very much so. But not in the ways many of us think, as we think of soul-crushing rush hour delays as the keystone of Atlanta traffic.
Recent staffing issues prompted me to have to move from my normal WSB Skycopter perch to cover traffic in the overnight hours for a couple of weeks. And while I look forward to getting back into the friendly skies, I am grateful for the time I have spent learning and observing Atlanta’s roads late at night.
By the way, I need to pause and say I am very thankful to Smilin’ Mark McKay for working morning-afternoon split shifts, in the meantime.
My temporary move to overnights opened my eyes to one overarching fact: when things go boom in the night, they boom hard.
This isn’t necessarily surprising. When the roads are nearly empty, cars can go faster. When they go faster, they hit harder.
And while some nights are extremely quiet, the percentage of the crashes that do happen being vicious, concussive, and fatal are way higher at night than are the numerous, slow-speed rush hour fender-benders.
I recently covered an overnight shift from 10 p.m. Oct. 21 to 6 a.m. Oct. 22. There were literally four traffic red alerts - or what our WSB Traffic Team issues when an interstate is completely closed.
Several cars wrecked and one flipped on I-285/eb (Inner Loop) at Powers Ferry (Exit 22) in Sandy Springs and shut it down for over three hours that night. Simultaneously, a car in Locust Grove nailed a freeway sign post and burst into flames on I-75/northbound at Bill Gardner Parkway (Exit 212), shutting that freeway down for less than an hour. A seemingly wrong-way crash in Alpharetta shut down GA-400/northbound at Windward Parkway (Exit 11) for several hours and the police also blocked some of Windward below the bridge.
As GA-400 began to clear, two cars nailed each other savagely in West Atlanta on I-20/eastbound near Lowery Boulevard (Exit 55).
In the midst of all of this, another vehicle in Union City flipped and blocked two left lanes on I-85/northbound near Flat Shoals Road (Exit 66).
This was all in less than eight hours on a Saturday night. And the roads were dry. Surreal.
On consecutive nights - Halloween and Nov. 1 - DeKalb Police dealt with fatal crashes in the I-20/I-285 interchange.
A terrible wreck just before the clock struck midnight on Oct. 31 killed a father and two children and ejected two other minors from that vehicle. This investigation and cleanup shut the I-285 CD ramp to I-20/eastbound that also feeds to Wesley Chapel (Exit 68) for almost four hours.
23 hours later, a crash killed a man in the through lanes of I-20/eastbound right at c, also shutting lanes for hours. This was just a few yards away from the prior night’s tragedy. Both wrecks were in the same active work zone and involved tractor trailers.
Reporting traffic in the overnight hours means never letting down the guard. Any terrible thing can happen in the dead of night. There are no really predictive traffic delays of which to speak - just the nightly work zones. But a split second can change road conditions and lives in an instant.
This potential volatility is the same reason that every driver should check road conditions before they head out at any hour. No one should ever take for granted that the roads are automatically going to be smooth sailing.
The time behind the wheel during these times should garner the same pause that planning a trip does. Just because the roads are wide open does not mean the throttles should be. There are too many inebriated, listless, reckless, and distracted motorists out there for any other driver to be complacent. Or too cavalier. Everything can change in a flash and maybe especially in the dead of night.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. He also hosts a traffic podcast with Smilin’ Mark McKay on wsbradio.com. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.
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