COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina has the deadliest rural roads in the nation, according to the State’s Department of Transportation (SCDOT).
Nearly 60% of fatal crashes in South Carolina happen on rural roadways according to the transportation department.
Duncan Smith, a traffic safety engineer for SCDOT, said over half of the fatal or serious injury crashes in the state come from drivers running off the road.
"And of those crashes, we end up with fixed objects being the number one problem," Smith said. And the number one fixed objects drivers run into is trees.
Between 2012 and 2016 there were 6,812 crashes on rural roadways that led to serious injury or death.
In 2017, SCDOT launched their Rural Road Safety Program to lower the high number of crashes. After three years of planning, they’re ready to get to work.
"It’s a two-part thing," Smith explained. "The first goal is to keep [drivers] in the road and second is to provide them with a safe location to recover if they do leave the roadway."
To keep drivers on the road, SCDOT is adding rumble strips on shoulders and making pavement markings wider and brighter. They’re also installing brighter road signs and putting a high friction treatment on pavement.
In case a driver runs off a rural road, SCDOT is creating more "clear zones" to provide a safe spot to recover.
The program includes stretches of major roadways like I-95, I-26 and I-77. In the Midlands, Smith said they just finished improving SC-302 toward Pelion and Highway 178 between Pelion and Batesburg-Leesville. He also said SCDOT is working on Route 76 toward Sumter and Route 521. Below is a map of all the rural roads in the Midlands that they plan to improve.
The Rural Safety Program is a 10-year plan to make improvements on 1,000 miles of rural roads in South Carolina. This year there have been 656 crashes resulting in 736 fatalities on all South Carolina roads so far, according to SCDOT.