New Restricted Crossing U-Turn will make road safer
A small change to a dangerous local intersection has just made Gilmer County a little bit safer, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).
The connection between Hwy. 515 and Old Hwy. 5 has been replaced with a Restricted Crossing U-Turn (RCUT).
“It’s a safety project,” GDOT Communications Officer Joe Schulman said. “We did studies of the intersection and found that there are some serious wrecks there.”
An RCUT intersection’s design makes left turns and going straight impossible. All drivers must take a right turn. If they want to go left or straight, they must make a U-turn.
This design greatly decreases the chances of forceful angle crashes. As a result, it’s much safer than a traditional intersection.
“It eliminates those dangerous left turns and when you go straight across. By removing those, and still allowing traffic to move through that area, it’ll make it safe,” he said.
For GDOT, it’s regular practice to find and improve dangerous intersections.
“We’re always looking at whether an intersection is in the public reports from first responders,” Schulman said.
Many of Georgia’s intersections aren’t designed with maximum safety in mind. Rebuilding them for safety has enormous potential to quietly save lives.
For instance, roundabouts have 95 percent fewer fatalities than traditional intersections, Schulman said.
“There’s no fast crashes and there’s no angled crashes,” he said.
Even when drivers are tired or distracted, the shape of an intersection forces them to follow the road in a safer way. A speed bump can make people slow down even when they don’t want to.
All these features also work passively. They don’t need cameras, traffic lights or any enforcement mechanism.
Over time, these design changes translate to lives and injuries prevented.
“We can’t control the drivers, and we can’t control the vehicles, but we can control the roads,” Schulman said.