Fatal Alabama wrecks abruptly rise

This is the valley of the shadow of death.

Thirty years of covering crime here leaves a mark everywhere, in my mind: places where the landmarks are nightmares and memories, scenes of old homicides, fatal fires and bad wrecks.

Every time I drive west through Phenix City, from 13th Street out U.S. 80 through Crawford and beyond, I pass multiple spots where people died in car crashes.

One is near the Macon County line, where Russell County Road 65 crosses U.S. 80. One night in the 1980s a photographer followed me out there in a driving rain, on deadline, because a family in a car going south on the county road missed the stop sign and hit a tractor-trailer.

The family went under the truck that was cruising east on 80. The impact ripped the car open like a lawnmower bisecting an aluminum can. Bodies were scattered all down the road.

By today’s media standards, that was a technologically primitive time. The photographer and I talked to the editor back at the office via two-way radio. If the radio battery died, we had to find a landline telephone. Cell phones, iPhones, Wifi, social media did not exist. Photographs did not pop up on a screen as soon as you shot them. They were on film that had to be developed and printed back at the office.

Nothing made the news until you got back to Columbus, typed the story and created the images. The photographer and I weren’t sure we’d get back by deadline. We thought we were having a bad night.

The wreck adjusted our perspective.

An ugly scene

When we got out there in the pelting rain, we saw white sheets stained with blood covering five bodies on the road. The space one occupied was not much bigger than a gallon of milk. A baby had been in the car.

We got that close because law enforcement had not the personnel, late at night in far west Russell County, to set up a perimeter to keep reporters away.

Having counted the toll and asked the coroner about each victim’s age and gender — the names would come later, after the next of kin got this heartbreaking news — I went looking for the lone survivor, the truck driver.

He had hiked about a quarter-mile east, to the nearest house that would let him in that late, in a thunderstorm, so he could call for help.

When I tromped up on the porch and asked for him, he came to the door and said he felt bad about what happened, especially about the child, but the car never slowed down. It was under his rig before he knew it. If the other driver tried to brake, the wet road allowed no traction.

Today I think of that wreck every time I cross that intersection.

Today we have many fatal wrecks to remember, on Alabama highways here, more than I recall occurring in a single year.

Deaths increasing

Once such fatalities frequented U.S. 431 south, through Seale and Pittsview to Eufaula. We gave the highway names like “Killer 431.” It was a winding two-lane then.

Now it’s four lanes, and not the killer it used to be. Now the two-lane roads running east-west try for the title.

This past July, three adults and two kids were killed in a head-on collision on U.S. 80 west of Phenix City. The children were ages 4 and 7. Their mother, 32, also died.

On Saturday, three people were killed in a collision on Alabama Highway 26, east of Hurtsboro.

These crashes with multiple fatalities, so like the one stuck in my mind from decades ago, stand apart from the one-car wrecks that take a life here and there. To those we grow accustomed, though we should not. These shock the senses.

I emailed a state trooper after Saturday’s crash, asking whether I was wrong in thinking the fatalities this year seem more than usual.

“No, we are way up on fatalities this year,” he wrote back. “Around 100-plus compared to this time last year. No troopers on the road as a deterrent.”

So if you’re going that way, watch where you’re going. Keep your eyes on the road, don’t pass on hills and curves, mind your speed and wear a seatbelt.

We have enough bad memories.

This story was originally published August 14, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Fatal Alabama wrecks abruptly rise."