At first, the news Thursday morning was aggravating. Rush-hour traffic all over north metro Atlanta was snarled for hours because of a fatality on I-285.
Then it got horrifying. The person killed was a pedestrian whose remains were scattered across several lanes of westbound traffic near Roswell Road: not knowing what they were hitting, drivers ran over them again and again.
The victim had a name — Gayla Joyce Walker. She was 53, lived in Dunwoody, had a family and dreams and troubles, just like all of us.
Why she was out on the highway — she apparently didn’t own a car — is still unknown as police try to piece together a very gruesome and mysterious hit-and-run-death. Investigators had to create a crime scene on a wide strip of asphalt designed to carry tens of thousands of harried citizens on their daily rounds.
If it seems more frequent — the TV news chopper hovering over a mass of blue lights which, in turn, is hovering over a dead pedestrian on the interstate — that’s because it is.
Georgia had the fourth-highest number of pedestrians killed on interstates — 447 between 1993 and 2012, according to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Only Texas, California and Florida had larger death totals. Georgia was ahead, way ahead, of more populous states like New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Why? The answer to that question is just as unclear as the answer to this question: who wanders onto an interstate in the dark?
Gayla Joyce Walker was an anomaly, according to a AAA Foundation study released in September. Of the 10,301 people killed over the 20-year period, 80 percent were male and almost half between 20 and 39 years old. Also, 37 percent were legally drunk. Ms. Walker’s frame of mind is uncertain.
Atlanta interstates are more dangerous
Deaths of pedestrians on interstates are not unusual. They also are almost certain:the risk of death when hit by a car traveling 55 mph is 90 percent.
Nationally, 10.5 percent of all pedestrian deaths are on interstates. Georgia’s rate is 14.1 percent.
Finding the who or why concerning such deaths from this study is difficult, because the data came from 50 states and all sorts of reporting systems. Researchers could not determine whether the victims were cops, roadside service providers, occupants of disabled vehicles or “people intentionally entering the roadway on foot.”
Michael Roberson, manager of Georgia Department of Transportation’ s HERO units, was unsure of the exact causes, saying “anecdotally, a lot of times people are walking on the interstate because they have car trouble or run out of gas and are walking to the nearest exit to get to assistance.”
HERO units, in fact, were created in the 1990s for just that reason. The CDC studied pedestrian deaths in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb counties between 1994 and 1998 because metro Atlanta had one of the highest rates nationally for pedestrian deaths. The study found that 67 of the 309 deaths, or 22 percent, were on interstates, twice the national average. It’s only natural that interstate pedestrian deaths would be higher in metro Atlanta, a hurried city with six-lane freeways and a NASCAR mentality.
But a 1990s AAA Foundation study found that “unintended pedestrians,” occupants of disabled cars, were only a third of interstate pedestrian deaths.
‘One was lying in a moving lane of traffic’
The three-year study of Texas, Missouri and North Carolina (the author could dig deeply into reports and compare apples to apples) found that 40 percent of the deaths were from people crossing the interstate afoot or walking into a lane of traffic.
Often they were drunk, irrational or taking a shortcut.
That happened last July when three men were killed crossing I-85 at Chamblee Tucker Road, blocking all southbound lanes for nearly two hours and causing an eight-mile backup. Authorities determined they had been drinking.
“They were trying to save time, they didn’t want to walk down the access road to the bridge,” said DeKalb police Capt. S.R. Fore.
Fore did a quick search Friday and found six pedestrian deaths on DeKalb interstates the past two years, including a man fixing a flat, a tow truck driver and a woman getting out after an accident.
The AAA 1990s study also had a macabre subset of victims: “Ten percent of the sample involved pedestrians standing or lying in the roadway. Several of the pedestrians in this scenario exhibited suicidal behavior.
“One pedestrian was lying in a moving lane of traffic on the interstate when a concerned driver pulled over and dragged the person onto the shoulder. The pedestrian then got up, moved back into the lane of traffic and was run over. Another pedestrian stood in the roadway, looked toward oncoming traffic, and spread his arms just before he was struck.”
The studies — and the HERO director — did strongly recommend when there is mechanical problems: Pull over as far as you can and, in most cases, stay in the car, keep your seat belt on and call 511, the HERO hotline.
And, I’d add, say a quick prayer.
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