College Baseball Team Bus Crash

The whole thing kind of freaks me out, because I fly into Atlanta a couple of times a year to drive to cities where I cover games. Sometimes the whole 75/85 thing can be intimidating in heavy traffic, and I'm wondering about the possibility of inadvertently ending up in the wrong lane and doing just this very thing.

 

It's possible, I guess (although, personally, I don't understand why people get so "intimidated" by freeways in any city).

But with this crash, there was no logical reason for confusion. The southbound split was 20 miles down the road, he certainly wasn't heading north (or had any reason to think about exiting on I-85 north, let alone Northside Drive), and you have to change lanes to get out of the HOV lane and into a left-exit lane anyway.

The confusion angle doesn't make sense, even for a driver unfamiliar with Atlanta's freeways.

 

When my vision was 20/10, I loved big-city driving. The worse your vision gets, the harder it is to see, read and comprehend road signs quickly at 80 mph, especially when there are four or five lanes across and you have to be aware of people shifting lanes without warning. That's what's unsettling to me about Atlanta driving at times.

 

Come to SoCal. We'll learn ya.

 

I lost a contact (from my "bad" eye) at my hotel in Seal Beach in 2003 when I was out there for a weekend of work. The horror. The traffic. The terror.

 

But it does make sense. An unfamiliar driver there might have thought it WAS the HOV lane and not an exit. The sign says "HOV -- Buses/Carpools Only" ... Since he was driving a bus, he may have thought that's where he was SUPPOSED to go. Latest stories give the feeling he wasn't all that experienced as a bus driver.

AJC has great video shot today of what it looks like as a driver: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/03/03/buscrashhovview.html

Not to mention: Many drivers get confused at things like turning right on red, which toll booth to drive into and how to operate turn signals .... so I certainly believe somebody can get confused at a left-side HOV exit ramp at 5:30 in the morning in a strange city.

 

Damn, that's a great video. Good work by the AJC, and good find, vecsey.

I guess if you're not familiar with what an HOV lane is, you might get confused driving in it. But the overhead sign says "Northside Drive" with the arrow pointing left. And the roadside sign says "Exit" with the arrow pointing left. And there's double signs with a red stop sign on it going up the ramp, plus an actual stop sign at the end of the ramp. ... And you still have to change lanes (from the HOV lane to the exit lane) before you get to any of those signs, or the hill to the end of the exit.

Granted, this is all hindsight ... but unless the driver was a little drowsy at 5 a.m. when it happened, at some point you've got to notice that you've changed lanes, don't you? Or the exit signs? Or all the stop sign markers? And if you're confused by the roads, don't most of us slow down when we're trying to figure out where we are? He barreled up the ramp, past the stop sign and over the bridge at 60 mph.

I mean, maybe the confusion angle makes sense. But the confusion doesn't.

DOT agrees. From the AJC story (link below) about the crash site: "Asked if the bus driver might have been confused all the same, State Department of Transportation director of operations Stephen Henry said, 'These are professional drivers.'"

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/03/03/metbusintersection0303.html?imw=Y

 

Buck, I understand what you're saying, but, seriously ... DMV employees are 'professional beaurocrats' but that doesn't make them any more competent, does it? You could argue that cab drivers are 'professional drivers.' Just because following big road signs seems fundamentally simple to smart, competent people like you and me, a large portion of the population can't do it ... I see 8,000 horrible decisions made every day on my 22-mile commute to work. And some of those people are probably pretty accomplished people. Like George Costanza said, Smart with rockets, dumb with parking. ...

 

I have driven through Atlanta a dozen or so times, and I'm always a little nervous about it. But there's only been one incident that made me realize just how crazy people are. I came into the city on 75, and the traffic was flowing along at 80mph. So I go with the flow. But I see a car behind me just rushing up on my back bumper. I seriously think this woman is going to slam into my car, so I flip on my signal and start to drift over into the right lane. That's when I see here veering into that lane as well. But she didn't use a signal. In an attempt to avoid an accident and keep her happy, I sped up to 90. But she shoots to my right into the far right lane and blasts past me at 100 mph just as we duck under an overpass in the heart of the city. Her lane, though, becomes jam-packed with cars trying to exit the road, so she has to slam on her brake and serves back in behind me. I was done playing that game. I slowed down to 80 again and made her ride my bumper until she found an opportunity to pass on my left.

 

I grew up near Atlanta, so I was used to moving over to allow the lead-foots to go around me. That's common around there.

In other parts of the country -- namely, SoCal -- it's common to stay in your lane and the Barney Oldfields [/spnited] will just weave around you instead. Took me, oh, three days to start weaving like a real Californian.

 

Watching the AJC video, I can understand how the bus driver could have mistakenly gotten on the ramp. For miles he had been keeping left to stay in the HOV lane, marked with diamonds. Suddenly his left lane splits, and the half on the left is marked with a diamond. An overhead sign at the split has a diamond and points to the left half (the ramp). Smaller lettering on that sign mentions a local landmark that the driver has never heard of (Northside Drive -- which, he might guess, could be the name of the freeway). It seems obvious that to stay in the HOV lane, he should obey the arrow, stay to the left, and go up the ramp, while the regular lanes continue on at ground level.

Seconds later, he should have seen the two Stop Ahead signs. Since he thought he was in a high-speed HOV lane, he might have thought that they were warning that he would have to stop in half a mile or so. Seconds after that, he came upon the actual stop sign, and then it was too late.

I'd say that there should be signs half a mile before the ramp warning that Northside Drive is a LEFT EXIT. At the split there should be two arrows, EXIT for the left ramp and HOV for the straight-ahead. And there should be flashing amber lights on the Stop Ahead signs. After this crash, I'd expect them also to install a flashing red light at the stop sign.

Too bad they couldn't have made these improvements before the 82 earlier crashes at this site.

 

Good find on the video. ... With respect to all of the deceased, why on Earth were there no skid marks? No brakes used? I could understand being confused at some point. ... But going up that ramp, it's pretty clear that that is not the freeway anymore. Right?

Or am I missing something? How about the STOP AHEAD signs on the road?

Something went wrong with this driver, which is awful.