Sandy Springs setting safety goals as fatal crashes increase on roadways

Fatal injury crashes increased by 30 to 40 percent in Sandy Springs even as all crashes reduced by 20 percent from 2018 to 2022, a consultant told the city council at its Oct. 1 meeting.

Nithin Gomez, a transportation engineer at Gresham Smith working on the city’s safe streets action plan, said the city had 27,502 crashes between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2022. Of those, 38 were fatal and 205 had serious injuries.

Gomez said single-vehicle crashes happen during dark conditions, many attributed to distracted driving.

“Pedestrian crashes usually happen within the confines of an intersection, and it happens more often during dark conditions,” he said. “Distracted driving can also lead to pedestrian crashes on our roadways.”

Aggressive driving combined with speeding occurs in the early hours of the day and could lead to roadway departure single-vehicle crashes, Gomez said.

The safety action plan’s goal is to reduce and eliminate all fatalities and serious injuries on roadways within Sandy Springs by 2050. Gomez said serious injuries are those injuries that change a person’s ability to live life as that person lived before.

During community outreach, participants cited a lack of protection for bicyclists and pedestrians and inadequate signage or road markings. Participants also mentioned intersection or turning-related issues, speeding or ignoring signage, driveway concerns, and poor visibility or roadway obstructions.

The most common crash locations included interchanges along I-285 and GA 400. Other common crash locations were at Roswell Road signalized intersections, Abernathy at Peachtree Dunwoody and Mt. Vernon Highway, Hammond Drive at Peachtree Dunwoody, and Holcomb Bridge at Spalding Drive.

Gomez said the most overrepresented fatal and serious injury crashes were single-vehicle, pedestrian, aggressive driving, motorcycle, impaired driving, and distracted driving.

Gomez said meeting the goals should realize an annual 5 percent reduction in fatalities and serious injuries.

Gomez said they will have a draft plan complete and ready for public view by the end of October. The next public meeting will be in November, and they will finalize the plan toward the end of January 2025. .

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