County commissioners discuss ‘corridor of destruction and death’

Shaver: ‘I’ve had the concerns brought to me’

Becca J. G. Godwin news-herald.net

During the Loudon County Commission workshop on Nov. 18, one of the agenda items was to discuss “traffic issues caused by interstate backups.”

Commissioner Van Shaver, who put the item on the agenda, said it’s a very serious topic.

“We’ve all seen what’s happened on Interstate 75, north and south, in Loudon County. That’s less than 20 miles of interstate and it’s basically just become a corridor of destruction and death,” Shaver said.

“I mean, it’s every day … I don’t know why there’s bad accidents all the time. It’s as straight a stretch of highway as you can get.”

Later, it was theorized that the straightness may actually be a contributing factor to accidents, by way of drivers paying less attention to the road.

with injuries, in 2024 thus far we had 59 wrecks with injury. Now this is just 75 from the split to down past Philadelphia. Beside wrecks with injuries in ‘23 we had 1,918 calls for service,” Shaver said.

“In 2024 thus far we’ve had 1,365 calls for service. ‘23 and ‘24 the ‘best roses’ figures are — and (911 Director Rose White) can’t know all for sure because when it comes to fatalities we know if they die on the spot, but they may die later and we may not know that … but we’ve had at least six deaths in that same time frame, so we have a problem with … Interstate 75 and it’s obvious the state of Tennessee has entirely dropped the ball on the interstate system in Tennessee, for sure right here.

“If they had equipment on the ground tomorrow, they couldn’t have anything done for 10 years so we’re not going to see any change.”

Commissioner Shaver continued: “So where I’m coming from on my end, we’ve always had the inconvenience of interstate blockages and everything jumping off and starting to hit the back roads in Loudon County.

“I guess the bridge repair is the longest thing we’ve had in a really long time, and it was two weeks. … But the trucks this time took alternate routes that I’ve never seen … We had trucks stuck on all these roads and probably very fortunate we didn’t have a bad accident there, because these roads are tiny and they’re very crooked.”

On Oct. 21, the Loudon County Highway Department put up “No Trucks” signs at Hotchkiss Valley, Hines Valley and Loudon Ridge Road, according to Road Superintendent Billy Pickel. But that hasn’t been enough to keep 18-wheelers off the roads.

“So my question to Billy and (Loudon County Sheriff Jimmy Davis): Is there more we can do? What else can we do? We’re not going to fix the interstate, you can patrol all day long and those people just can’t drive apparently.

“Is there more we can do to keep mostly trucks — the cars are bad enough because they fly, but the trucks are deadly — to keep them off of these little bitty back roads?”

The matter was discussed for a while, but no one had any solid solutions to propose. It’s an issue that’s also impacting neighboring Monroe County, where interstate shutdowns from Hurricane Helene prompted semi-trailer trucks to start taking curvy mountain roads.

Shaver asked Pickel and Davis to reach out to any relevant agencies they can to try and get some relief.