Unsung HEROs keep their eyes on roads

Robert Sims, state HERO truck driver, white knight of the Atlanta highways, has some advice for drivers as traffic ticks up toward summer.

Change your clothes at home, not while driving.

No shaving behind the wheel.

Sex: likewise.

Because, it turns out, people do those sorts of things, even while guiding a 2,000-pound vehicle at a steady clip down an interstate highway.

“A lot,” said Sims, an eight-year HERO veteran and now a shift supervisor.

The sun-baked spring breakers filling the roadways this weekend are just the start of a pre-summer increase in traffic, as vacationers hit the road and others just feel more comfortable driving extra errands in the sun. The traffic hosts all comers, and a remarkable array of behaviors. When those streams collide, it is often the state Department of Transportation’s HERO trucks — Highway Emergency Response Operations — that respond.

Among the few Atlantans whose job is not to get out of traffic on time but to work in it all day long, their real purpose is to untie traffic jams as quickly as possible.

In an age of declining funds for road-building, HEROs are part of a larger trend to seek new, cheaper ways to lessen congestion.

They responded to more than 120,000 calls last year, with their busiest month in June, according to DOT.

Sims, calm and amiable, a tattoo on each arm for his daughter and son, discussed his job with a visitor during one April shift as he made the rounds, answering dispatches from DOT’s Georgia Navigator traffic center.

On this recent Friday, Sims’ nine calls stuck to the straight and narrow: stalls, empty tanks. At 2:30 p.m. on the southbound Downtown Connector, traffic was stop and go, just because. “It’s been like this probably since the beginning of March,” he said.

Dispatched to I-285 to help a colleague, Sims soon came upon HERO driver Reginald Fennelle dealing with a car stopped in the shoulder by the fast lane.

Using controls at his right hand, Sims turned on his flashing arrows, and switched on his siren between settings labeled “yelp” and “wail” to jar the drivers behind him into stopping. They did. Fennelle started pushing the car across all four lanes to get the driver, Cagney Stigger, 24, and her stalled 2004 Saturn off the road.

Suddenly, one driver in the pack of stopped traffic behind Sims decided not to wait. A white SUV darted from behind Sims, then whizzed around Fennelle’s HERO truck pushing the Saturn. Another driver did the same.

The two HEROs and Stigger arrived safely on the outside shoulder. Stigger fumed about her car. She was glad to see the HEROs. But scared? No.

“I don’t get scared,” Stigger said.

Back in his truck afterward, Sims marveled that some people don’t sense the danger they’re in. “Reginald said he came up on her and she was just sitting there eating french fries,” he said.

Others whom Sims helped that day freely admitted they were frightened, among other things.

The first thing Renee Wilkinson thought as the navy blue Nissan minivan she was riding in stalled was, “They’re going to talk about us on the radio.”

On an average weekday at any given time about 25 HEROs patrol metro Atlanta’s interstates and Ga. 400, according to DOT.

The HERO program costs $5.2 million to run now, about $6 million when it’s at full staff, according to DOT spokeswoman Monica Luck. Drivers make $24,000 to $32,000, and supervisors like Sims make more. Last year DOT sold advertising space on the sides of its trucks to an insurance company for $1.7 million a year for at least three years.

Summer mostly brings more of what HEROs see all year, Sims said, though if gas prices go up as usual, that will mean more calls for people out of gas. And he thinks seasonal motorcyclists who come out for the summer have less experience, take more risks and make the roads more dangerous. (Unlike the year-round ones who know what they’re doing.) Their crashes can be gruesome.

In the line of duty, HERO drivers see some terrible things.

They also learn about a niche of roadway life that few drivers, isolated in their own cars, would guess exists.

Some Atlanta workers, with lengthening commutes putting the squeeze on personal time, perform their morning routine in their vehicles.

They shave, apply makeup and do their hair. Some bored travelers engage in intimate relations.

Sims recalls honking at one man who was shaving, his face covered with foam. The man glared at Sims for the interruption and returned to his shave.

Sometimes the stories are funny, until Sims gets to the part about why he was there: the crash.

One driver was found unconscious in the driver’s seat, his naked back facing up and a shirt covering his head. His car had crashed under a tractor-trailer.

Responders turned him over and saw he was a she, and they revived her. Then the cause came into focus, Sims said. “She was like, ‘The last thing I remember, I was driving and trying to change my shirt and I got stuck.’ ”

He’s seen I-285 covered in watermelons after a cargo spill, and on another occasion, large chickens.

Interstate 285 has its own character. “You’d be surprised the number of people that just drive around I-285,” not knowing they’re repeating a loop, he said.

By now, little fazes Sims, he said. He’s learned to deal with the fatalities, knowing at least he’s helping others. And working in traffic jams doesn’t bother him — though driving in his personal vehicle in them does.

“I like riding around on the interstates anyway,” he said.

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How we got the story

Staff writer Ariel Hart and staff photographer Johnny Crawford rode with a HERO supervisor for part of his 1 to 9 p.m. shift, which he spent partly at his desk and partly on the road. Because Sims is a supervisor, he has more range than regular HEROs in the roads he drives. After starting from HERO headquarters underneath I-85 just north of the Brookwood Merge, they traveled I-85, the Downtown Connector, I-20 and I-285. Hart interviewed highway motorists, HERO drivers and state transportation officials, and reviewed government documents relating to HERO operations and traffic trends.

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Trouble spots

The worst metro highway spots, in Sims’ view, are all curves at interchanges:

● I-20 eastbound to the Connector northbound, with a slight downhill slant where imprudent drivers can gather speed right before a curve. “There’s a sharp corner, and every time it rains you can just almost sit there and wait” for a spin-out or crash, Sims said.