One of the most impactful and tragic traffic problems in my 13-year tenure on the WSB Traffic Team took place 10 years ago this week. On March 2, 2007, a charter bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team crashed through the fence on the Northside Drive bridge over Interstate 75. The bus flew off of the overpass and onto I-75/southbound below, closing it for hours during the morning drive and creating a massive traffic jam.
The wreck killed seven, including the driver, and injured 28 others. While en route to a game in Florida, the driver mistook the HOV exit ramp to Northside Drive for a regular lane and had no time to slow down, crashing 20 feet to the ground below. WSB Radio reporter Richard Sangster’s first dispatch from the scene is absolutely haunting.
“The bus has gone over the bridge!” Sangster, a veteran who had reported from fires and murder scenes for years, exclaimed, out of breath, with pregnant pauses filling the sentence. He relayed his absolute shock — a feeling that would soon come over many who heard the news.
We got calls immediately in the WSB Traffic Center. I had just stepped out of the room and came back just as the WSB Jam Cam affixed on the heaping mess on I-75. Matt Denine, who was filling in for Mark Arum on Channel 2 Action News (Arum would later say he picked one heck of a day to take off), just looked at me — we couldn’t believe what was going on.
We put our noses down and went to work, answering calls, putting the correct information on the web, and mapping out alternates for listeners both on the air and who were blowing up our phones. Capt. Herb Emory had the WSB Skycopter over the scene for a couple of hours, outlining to commuters the bedlam below. It was a traffic nightmare for us and an actual nightmare for the families involved.
Parents of some of the fallen in the crash immediately began to lobby the government for higher safety standards in charter buses. Among other things, new buses now must have three-point restraints for each passenger. But calls for anti-shatter window glazing and better roof designs are still up in the air.
One measure shows that in the 10 years since the Bluffton crash, 170 motorcoach crashes or fires have killed 250 and injured at least 2,500. Those are scary numbers, considering how safe many of us feel inside large buses.
Just Wednesday, a car on Riverside Parkway in Cobb County hit a bus head-on, sending two children on the bus to the hospital with minor injuries. The threat of unsafe travel in school buses and other large transport vehicles is very much alive.
The state of Georgia erected proper signage on the Northside Drive HOV ramp in 2009, indicating a 35 mph speed limit on signs on both sides of the road and then stop sign warnings just ahead of those. Frankly, two years was too long to wait for those small necessities.
The Bluffton University bus crash goes down as one of the unforgettable traffic events in Atlanta history. On a similar level Snowmageddon 2014 or the Interstate 285 plane crash in 2015 are just as memorable. But while it was an event and a story for most of us, it was life-altering for the families of those killed or hurt. Keep them in your prayers, as these painful memories rise to the surface again during this very hard week for them.
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