Two motorists have been killed in four days on a stretch of I-75 in middle Georgia near a Georgia Department of Transportation work zone.
Both fatal crashes occurred near mile marker 149 in Peach County, authorities said.
Troy Wilcox, 63, of Lizella, was killed early Wednesday when his passenger van was hit from behind and pushed into a tractor-trailer that had stopped for the construction, according to the Georgia State Patrol. Another crash ahead of the fatal collision also brought the tractor-trailer and other vehicles on the interstate to a stop, the GSP said.
Last weekend, Kamil Panjwani, 22, of Decatur, was killed Sunday night when his vehicle was hit from behind in the same area and pushed into a guardrail, according to The Telegraph of Macon.
A spokeswoman for the GDOT said both accidents appear to be cases of distracted driving. Natalie Dale also said GDOT crews made sure that proper traffic control was in place.
“Backups can happen for multiple reasons and secondary crashes are most prevented by alert drivers,” Dale said in an email.
Both accidents happened at night, and in both cases, traffic was merging into fewer lanes because of the construction.
“Any time you go from three lanes to one, it gets busy, and you’re bound to have problems,” Byron Police Chief Wesley Cannon said Wednesday.
Dale said because of predictions of rain, no closures will occur in the area again until Sunday night. The GDOT has guardrail and other work going on from Peach County north to Monroe County on different nights.
