Highway 80 Infrastructure Petition

What Is The Highway 80 Infrastructure?

I want to highlight a really neat motorcycle advocacy piece that the State of Georgia has taken the lead on. I’ll also explain to you the two reasons why I think it’s important for us to highlight this petition and how a motorcycle accident law firm in Cumming, GA can help.

Let me tell you first what it is. Some of you may have heard of it, but it’s a great example for us going forward. This is the highway 80 petition that has been filed regarding an eastbound curve on highway 80 in Phenix City.

What’s happening there is on this curve, it’s over a bridge, and it’s a 40-foot drop to a road below It started with one particular motorcycle accident, and then it was highlighted that this has happened before several times, which shows that this is a very dangerous curve for motorcycle riders.

So, what happens is when there’s a wreck on this curve, several motorcycle riders have been propelled in the air from the wreck and have gone over the very low barrier on this curve of the bridge, and then they fall 40 feet down to the road below.

There have been several deaths from that, and what it highlighted is infrastructure issues in how motorcycle riders are not being properly thought of when DOT is looking at roadway design, safety measures, and things like that. This petition, in particular, is focusing on this one stretch of highway to try to get this barrier heightened to keep motorcycle riders from going over and down 40 feet potentially to their death.

The Role Of Advocacy

Really great advocacy is important. This is the type of stuff that unfortunately riders have got to get more involved in, which is the micro-local issues, safety issues in particular.

There’s also other issues, but in particular, we have to try to help us stay safe. We know we’re going to get in wrecks out there and we know that these vehicles are not looking out for us. We’re getting numbers that are worse and worse every day especially, this year.

We need to have a DOT that is looking at infrastructure, not just from your typical motor vehicle with four wheels, but also motorcycle riders that have unique characteristics to their accidents. So, a great argument here is for motorcycle rights and in particular, safety.

Infrastructure Concerns For Motorcycle Riders

Number two, is what I’ve highlighted before in a prior video which is infrastructure concerns. I want you guys to be particularly aware of that. I want to hear from you so we can share to help protect each other and again, maybe highlight other areas that we can get organizations like the state of Georgia involved locally to try to help petition and change some of these infrastructure concerns for motorcycle riders.

What’s clear from all of this and from what I’ve researched is, the United States does not properly look at motorcycle safety when they are constructing infrastructure for roads. I know this from the legal work that I’ve done in pursuing infrastructure design negligence. They have a ton of data and they do a lot to try to make these roads safe for commuters, but again they’re missing the motorcycle rider.

Europe and Asia are way ahead of us in taking into consideration every time that they create some infrastructure that motorcycle riders, in particular, are going to be safe in whatever they’re designing.

So, again there is an interesting advocacy perspective here in the micro-local community to try to protect motorcycle riders.

What infrastructure issues have you seen on certain roads that are similar to what’s going on with this petition? We’re not talking about the things that we all know that’s out there which are grass clippings and those sorts of things.

I’m talking about hard infrastructures that the state or the federal government are designing that are dangerous as you’re out there riding. Let us help bring awareness for all of us when we’re out there riding and maybe give us some more advocacy issues that we can raise on the local level.