A new national safety initiative will focus on two Robeson County roadways after several recent fatalities.
State transportation officials announced that two roads in Robeson County “will be the focus of a new, nationally sponsored safety initiative,” according to a press release from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
The two sections of roads will include a 12-mile section of N.C. 711 in the Pembroke area and a 15-mile section of Great Marsh Church Road near the Bladen-Robeson County line, the release said. “On those two roadways, a combined 11 people have died in crashes over a recent five-year period. Another 82 crashes involving injuries occurred along those two stretches.”
“Numerous agencies and local institutions will work in a collaborative approach that seeks to identify strategies to reduce crashes and eliminate deaths along these two roads,” stated the release. About 48 people died in roadway crashes in Robeson County in 2018 and about 53 people died in 2017.
“DOT is saying we are willing to put all options on the table that we can justify as a solution,” Kevin Lacy, the state’s traffic engineer for the NCDOT, said in the release. “Let’s come up with some strategies that will work on these corridors. If we are successful, we believe we can spread those strategies to other corridors.”
Lacy spoke to members of the Robeson County Vision Zero Task Force, which is “a grassroots-led group of community stakeholders who kicked off a campaign last year that seeks to reduce crashes and save lives across Robeson County.”
“NCDOT and the N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program have identified these two corridors to be part of a Rural Route Safety Initiative sponsored by the National Governors Association,” adds the release. “The program identifies highways with high rates of crashes and fatalities and then seeks to find innovative solutions, using a four-prong approach of engineering, education, enforcement and emergency response.”
