Improvements set for intersection

In the meantime, Sheriff Jud Smith has assigned deputies to control morning traffic on Hwy. 211 to make sure courthouse and jail employees get to work safely.

All of the measures were put into place after a second employee was injured on her way to work at the courthouse when her car was t-boned by a loaded down tractor-trailer that was traveling the 55 mph speed limit and couldn’t make the sudden stop.

Gail Buchanan, a senior clerk in the Barrow County Magistrate’s Office, had stopped her car in the travel lane of the state highway, because the road does not have a left-turn lane.

She was treated at Gwinnett Medical Center for a shoulder injury and head laceration, but everyone who saw her wrecked car agreed that she was extremely fortunate to have survived the impact.

A week earlier, Nat Dukes, the director of the county’s Department of Roads & Bridges, was injured when his county vehicle was in the same spot and rear-ended.

Dukes told the Barrow Journal this week that he is recovering, but he continues to have leg and back pain.

The county’s decision not to add a left turn lane at the entrance to Barrow Park Drive has been a point of controversy since 2008.

Greeson since February has asked GDOT officials to agree to several temporary measures to improve safety at the site until the turn lane is built.

But he said Tuesday night that the state agency refused to lower the 55 mph speed limit on the highway.

GDOT last week did erect two county-purchased warning signs to alert drivers to vehicles turning left.