STATISTICS
Georgia is among the top five states in the nation for fatality crashes involving commercial trucks, according to the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. There were more than 16,000 commercial truck crashes statewide — 157 of them fatal — in 2014. That’s a 4 percent increase over the previous year.
Recent Truck-Related Crashes on I-16
» April 22, 2015: Five Georgia Southern students were killed in a fiery wreck after a tractor-trailer slammed into stop-and-go traffic.
» May 20, 2015: A tractor-trailer smashed into two cars and burst into flames on the same stretch of road, killing another five people.
Gov. Nathan Deal on Thursday unveiled a plan to hire 60 additional highway safety officers around Savannah's bustling port and metro Atlanta's most congested corridors in response to recent deadly crashes involving tractor trailers on I-16 that shocked South Georgia and galvanized local politicians.
Deal plans to set aside $10 million each year to fund the extra commercial vehicle enforcement officers, who will patrol “high crash corridors” near I-16 and I-95, as well as the traffic-choked highways leading to Atlanta.
“We’re not going to be outflanked by anybody on this issue,” Deal said at a news conference outside Savannah, flanked by dozens of Georgia State Patrol officers. “We don’t think there’s one silver bullet, but we think this is the most significant step that Georgia has taken in quite a while.”
He was jolted into action by two deadly wrecks that took place within one month of each other. An April 22 crash involving a tractor-trailer killed five nursing students from Georgia Southern University. Then on May 20, an 18-wheeler smashed into two cars on a stretch of road about 20 miles away from the April accident site, killing five more people.
The wrecks led to an outcry from local officials. Police chiefs urged the state to restore their powers to inspect big rigs. Republican Rep. Buddy Carter joined with House Democrats to request new safety regulations for truck drivers, and Georgia's U.S. senators pressed the federal Department of Transportation to require speed limiting technology on trucks.
The governor’s plan would increase the ranks of commercial vehicle enforcement officers to nearly 300. The unit’s officers are charged with scrutinizing commercial vehicles for proper permits and safety equipment and probing for potential violations.
Deal, however, indicated there was no effort to reverse a 2011 change that stripped local law enforcement officers of the power to inspect trucks. The Department of Public Safety at the time said the move would free up police units to focus on crime and traffic violations.
New trucking traffic
Georgia’s highways are expected to grow even busier. State transportation officials estimate that vehicles drove about 300 million miles daily in Georgia in 2013. That’s estimated to swell to 350 million miles each day next year.
And the Port of Savannah’s projected 5 percent annual growth over the next decade, partly a result of a long-planned deepening, is set to result in a crush of new trucking traffic near the port and through Atlanta’s congested corridors.
Increased traffic typically means more wrecks, and the number of fatal wrecks involving big rigs in Georgia has already jumped 4 percent since 2013.
Deal’s plan includes about 20 new officers for metro Atlanta and another 34 for coastal Georgia. Six additional officers will be assigned to Troup County, where the Kia plant, which began production in late 2009, has led to sharp increases in trucking traffic. The first wave of troopers could be on the streets within a few months.
State leaders are wading into a complex policy debate with the move. Federal policymakers are weighing a range of trucking regulations, from new restrictions on driver hours to new rules requiring speed regulators and collision avoidance systems. But experts are sharply divided over which strategies are most effective.
Technology or troopers?
Stephen Owings, a Smyrna man who founded Road Safe America after his son was killed in a tractor-trailer accident in 2002, said politicians should focus on sophisticated speed limiters and collision avoidance systems to be used on tractor-trailers.
“I hate to say anything negative about more enforcement, because Lord knows there’s not enough of it,” said Owings. “But I don’t think it would have prevented either one of these crashes. The technology we are asking for would.”
Others, including the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, argue that more officers focused on commercial trucks will make streets safer. And Jimmy DeLoach, a former Savannah politician whose granddaughter Abbie was among the victims of the April wreck, said it meant that some good will come out of the horrendous accident.
“This will help,” he said, noting that minutes earlier he dodged an overly aggressive big-rig driver on his way to Deal’s announcement. “I was driving 70 miles an hour, and that big truck passed me like I was stopped.”
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