High speeds, poor driving cause wrecks on routes to Savannah

Fire Chief Doug Graham still remembers the first time he was called to a fatal crash in the southern Jasper County community of Levy.

The elderly victim was dead when Graham, now chief of the Levy Fire Department, arrived at the wreck on SC 315.

Her face, however, still bore an expression of shock from the moment another driver crossed into her lane and struck her car head on.

Years later, Graham has responded to numerous head-on collisions in Jasper County's "trouble spot" -- what he calls SC 315 and Speedway Boulevard, the stretch of US 17 that links Interstate 95 to the Georgia state line.

The latest wreck on the thoroughfares occurred Monday on the Back River Bridge, leaving a Bluffton man dead.

Graham says he once tried to count the number of people he's pulled from cars on the two-lane roads.

"I couldn't do it," he said Wednesday. "It just goes on and on and on."

"When you get a call on that road, you look for the very worst," he continued. "When you get there and it's minor, it's like a relief -- like you've got a new lease on life."

Since 2010, at least 10 people were killed and 404 people injured in wrecks on the bridge, Speedway Boulevard and SC 315, also called South Okatie Highway, according to the S.C. Department of Public Safety.

In one of those accidents, in November 2013, a head-on wreck on the bridge left both drivers dead.

On Monday, 51-year-old Barney Kenneth Clegg Jr. of Bluffton tried to pass two other cars on the bridge and struck them before swerving in front of a bus traveling in the opposite direction. He died and three people in the other cars were injured.

Past years have seen other devastating accidents.

In 2005, a single crash on SC 315 left six people dead. A Hilton Head Island couple and two Bluffton teenagers were returning from a wedding in Savannah when a drunken driver crossed the center line and struck them head-on, killing all four. Two teenage passengers in the drunken driver's pickup truck died as well.

Improper lane changes, driving on the wrong side of the road and DUIs accounted for only 10 percent of the wrecks since 2010, according to the state agency.

Nearly 40 percent of the 736 accidents on those roads were caused by two things -- failure to yield right of way and driving too fast for conditions.

"Some of it's just people rushing from Point A to Point B," Jasper County Sheriff Gregory Jenkins said.

BRIDGE WORK

Drivers are allowed to pass each other on the bridge, but not for much longer.

A new 0.6-mile span set to replace the 60-year-old bridge will prohibit passing and feature a reduced speed limit of 45 mph, down from 55 mph, according to Georgia Department of Transportation spokesperson Jill Nagel.

The new span is nearly 70 percent complete, she said.

By this summer, drivers will be able to use the bridge to travel from South Carolina onto Hutchinson Island.

By the end of the year, the bridge will accommodate all traffic between Jasper County and Savannah.

GDOT will then begin work to remove the old structure.

ROAD WIDENING

Plans are also underway to widen the stretch of U.S. 17 that connects the bridge to SC 315, though construction would not begin until at least 2018, SCDOT project manager Joy Riley said.

The new road would have four lanes divided by a grassy median. To prevent bottlenecking at the Jasper County-Georgia border, SCDOT plans to build a second two-lane bridge on the Back River, though money for that project will not be available until at least 2021, Riley said.

The $53-million widening project is federally funded, with a 20 percent match by SCDOT, she said. The $8-million cost of the bridge project would be split between South Carolina and Georgia.

'THEY CAN FLY'

Graham says he doesn't believe US 17 or SC 315 are more dangerous than other roads in the area.

Drivers, though, certainly seem to treat them differently, he said.

"Cars follow me all the way down (S.C. 46) but when they get on 315, it's like they've got to pass you," he said. "They think once they get in Jasper County and they get on that road, they can do whatever they want. They can fly."

Because the roads don't have wide shoulders -- or any shoulder in some stretches -- serious accidents also snarl traffic for hours. Monday's wreck closed the Back River and Talmadge Memorial bridges and the first half of Speedway Boulevard from 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Jenkins and Lance Cpl. Hannah Wimberly of the S.C. Highway Patrol said the solution is simple. They urge drivers to avoid speeding and passing.

Any driver who feels intimidated by a tailgater can pull off at a safe location, take down the other vehicle's tags and call Highway Patrol at *47, Wimberly said.

If there is no safe and legal spot to pull over, drivers should follow the speed limit and keep going.

"Don't speed up and don't slow down," Wimberly said. "You've got to be patient while driving."

Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.

Related content:

• Bluffton man dies in crash on Back River Bridge , March 17, 2015

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 3:59 PM with the headline "High speeds, poor driving cause wrecks on routes to Savannah."