ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 22, 1997 TAG: 9702240037
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
Looking for a likely place to crash?
More traffic accidents occur at the intersection of Williamson Road and Orange Avenue than at any other location in Roanoke, according to the American Trucking Association, whose representatives were in town Friday as part of a national highway safety campaign.
The intersection of Franklin Road and the Roy L. Webber Expressway near Tanglewood Mall provides the second best opportunity to get into an accident, the trucking group said.
Roanoke police confirmed that these are the top two spots in the city for accidents. Lt. Ramey Bower, head of the police department's traffic division, said the Williamson-Orange intersection ranks consistently at the top. It saw 47 accidents last year.
Spokesmen for the ATA and members of the association's America's Road Team, a group of professional drivers who travel the country educating people about highway safety, are visiting 40 U.S. cities that are considered major transportation centers. The team began its trek Thursday in Norfolk and will be traveling next week to Lexington, Ky.
Part of the team's mission is counteracting the negative image of truckers held by some drivers who share the highway with them. The primary focus of the effort is safety, but "we're also trying to set the record straight in terms of truckers," said Devon Williams of the ATA.
Statistics, she said, show that in two-thirds of truck-car accidents, the driver of the car is found at fault.
Accompanying Williams and other ATA representatives to Roanoke was Paul Todorovich of Charlotte, N.C., a driver for Landstar Inway Inc. Todorovich, who has been in the trucking business for 17 years and a driver for eight, is familiar with Roanoke, where he occasionally makes deliveries at the Norfolk Southern Corp. rail car shops.
He had these tips for motorists who are sharing the road with trucks:
* Don't cut directly into the space in front of a truck. Trucks take longer to stop, and the space in front of them is their safety cushion.
* Don't linger alongside when passing a truck, because truckers often have blind spots and may not know you're there.
* When following a truck, don't get so close you can't see the truck's rear-view mirrors. If you can't see the mirrors, the trucker can't see you.
According to the ATA, trucking employed 196,899 workers in Virginia in 1990 and paid average annual wages of $29,907. Trucks made up 2.5 percent of all the state's registered vehicles that year.
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