Twists and Turns, Hills and Concerns
Liz Fabian | The Macon Newsroom
The Interstate 16 West on-ramp from northbound Spring Street closed in January 2020 due to construction, forcing drivers to turn left at the Emery Highway traffic light.
Two months ago, a Mercer University student got into a terrible accident which they felt was not their fault, but more so the road itself. Macon-Bibb County is no stranger to road complaints, as Macon roads are responsible for numerous car crashes and deaths yearly. A study that was done on Enjuris in 2020 proved Bibb County had the highest number of accidents that were reported at the end of 2019. On the Enjuris it states “By a long shot, Bibb County reported the highest total number of accidents in the region with 7,720 in 2019. The second-highest county in southwest Georgia was Thomas County at 562.” The wreck the Mercer student was in was caused by the road being narrow and a one-lane.
“I think it was a road that’s not very wide, and pretty narrow, meant for 2 lanes, and there’s only one lane for each direction so there’s not a lot of space to swerve if there’s a car on the side of the road.” Said the Mercer University student. “I would say the roads of Macon are very tossy curvy, very unpredictable, and a lot of the paint on the roads are not visible so a lot of people will get confused especially if they don’t travel on Macon’s roads often.”
13WMAZ reporter Jessica Cha does a segment on their channel called “Driving Me Crazy” where people call in if they have concerns about a road or something that has been messing with or bothering them for a really long time. “The crashes that happen in Macon are a lot higher than in a lot of the surrounding cities. Macon is even leading in pedestrian deaths for the Southwest region of the state of Georgia. But you know, they’re working on it, but I do think is pretty high here in Macon,” Cha says.
Macon-Bibb road constructors are already in the works of improving some of the roads in Macon. There are so many bad roads that in order to notice all the improvement, it would have to all be done at the same time. The Macon-Bibb County Board of Commissioners is trying its best to identify where all crashes have taken place and are using information from citizens to move accordingly in the near future to handle the roads.