Hines Valley speeding causes iss

“What the guy told the police was that he was fixing to pass a guy and he come around the curve and wanted to swerve out past the guy and a water bottle fell in the floor,” Coppock said. “He was reaching down to get it and his back tire ran off the right side of the road and he hit the culvert, hit a tree, flipped three times and crashed into our house. All this while doing 40 miles an hour.”

No one was hurt inside the vehicle or the house. Coppock said his wife walked out of the bedroom moments before the wreck and saw the vehicle crash through the yard.

Residents say speeding and reckless driving have become more prevalent since 2019.

“Speeding’s been bad out here for a while,” Coppock said. “Where I live, as soon as you come out through those last curves the straightway before you get to the Beauty for Ashes, we live right there. As soon as they come around the curve, you can hear them and they pass people all the time in front of our house. ... We’ve actually talked about moving because of it. I just built a $60,000 garage so I really don’t want to move, but it’s kind of hard laying in here at bed at night so close to the road wondering if a car’s going to come through your house again.”

In December, Jack A. Huffaker went to sleep not knowing he would wake up in the middle of the night with a vehicle underneath his trailer.

“I was sleeping in my back bedroom back in the back and it sounded like the end of the world,” Huffaker said. “I mean when he hit he had his headlights on, it knocked my blinds open and a flash of light into my bedroom. It knocked me to the foot of my bed and he knocked it that way 3 foot, this way 2 1/2 foot and it threw me out onto the floor. I got up and I noticed the trailer was elevated but I couldn’t figure out what was going on because I was still in a daze-like sleeping. ... I got out and went to the back door and opened it and couldn’t hardly get it opened. He had hit this corner and he was up under the trailer.”

Huffaker’s property has been affected two other times, with the most recent occurring May 19 in the afternoon damaging his car port, a portion of his home and the back porch.

Now Huffaker said he’s afraid to sleep in his bed.

“I’m afraid to lay down at night and rest because I don’t know when they’re going to come through here,” Huffaker said. “In 2019 a young lady in a Mustang came through when it was raining, misting rain. Well it gets extremely slick right there (near the curve) for some reason, I guess the road’s wore down or whatever. Well she lost control and she came up through there where the flower bed is there and tore my back porch off, which wasn’t that bad, nobody got hurt and it didn’t do damage to my mobile home, and they’ve paid for fixing everything, my porch back on and everything. I said, ‘Well maybe that was just a fluke accident’.”

Huffaker, too, has considered moving, but the price to leave is too steep.

His neighbor, Joanna Seals, also received some property damage from the May 19 wreck. Seals has three grandchildren and babysits a friend’s 2-year-old child.

“One day back in the fall we were waiting for the bus, the baby and I was, and this car started flying and she came squealing to stop,” Seals said. “The baby and I jumped back and she looked at us with her hands up like, ‘What?’ And (the bus driver) slapped on the side of the bus letting you know, ‘Hey, you’re supposed to stop. This sign’s out.’ If he would have just let them get off the bus without paying attention, they could have got ran over. It’s not the first time they’ve squealed tires trying to stop for the bus.”

Seals said drivers need to slow down before someone gets injured.

“I think it’s just traveled more and there’s more younger ones out now,” Seals said. “They know there’s nobody here to catch them. You hardly ever see anybody trying to watch it.”

Loudon County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Jimmy Davis said he is aware speeding is an issue.

“We’re trying to up our patrols in that area,” Davis said. “We’re trying to maybe next year — we’ve applied for a total of $65,000 in grants from (Tennessee Highway Safety Office). We’re looking at a $5,000 visibility grant and two other grants that are $30,000 apiece and we’re looking at upgrading our speed trailer to kind of bring attention to, ‘Hey, you’re speeding,’ make sure everybody knows what the speed limit is out there, and obviously just enforcement if we can. We’ve asked for additional deputies this year and we have an overlap, we’ve rearranged some of our scheduling where we have an overlap from 8 p.m. until midnight and we’re going to try to use that. We’ve been trying to use it to kind of do some proactive law enforcement instead of just reactive. So instead of just answering calls and things of that nature, we’ve got one of the shifts that at the same time try to do some proactive, whether it’s run radar and that’s one of the hot spots we’re trying to keep an eye on for the next few weeks for sure.”

Huffaker has reached out to Loudon County Highway Department for possibly installing a guardrail near his property, but he hasn’t received much luck.

Eddie Simpson, county road superintendent, said he offered to work with Huffaker, but he can’t afford a guardrail for every resident.

“If we put one in front of every house that gets a car through their yard we’re in trouble,” Simpson said. “There’s no way we can make it. I have a line item for replacement of guardrail, but putting up new guardrail I just don’t have a line item. ... I just decided 11 years ago when I was elected that that wasn’t one of my priorities to put guardrails up unless it’s a life-threatening event and in my opinion that’s not because the road’s not crooked, there’s a small curve there, but the people just drive too fast down that road and they can’t make that curve, especially when you’ve had way too much to drink.”

Simpson said a recent state safety audit showed no dangerous issues.