Traffic woes Along State Highway 181 Corridor
DAPHNE Ala
September 1, 2024
By: Rick McCann
The road once called County Road 27 is all but a faded memory these days replacing cows, horses, and agriculture with homes, shopping centers, and a four-lane highway.
The peaceful and tranquil setting and two-lane road now looks and sounds more like a freeway and there’s a lot more of that yet to come.
According to Wikipedia, and my own frequent drive down this bustling roadway, State Route 181 is a 18.235-mile-long route in Baldwin County in the southwestern part of the state. The southern terminus of the route is at its junction with US 98 near Magnolia Springs. The northern terminus of the route is at its junction with US 31, near Spanish Fort.
This 18.235-mile road is policed by five law enforcement agencies and one day sooner than you think, a sixth police agency could appear.
These police agencies include Spanish Fort, Daphne, Fairhope, the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office, and ALEA state troopers.
Since the widening of the road which was completed in phases, more and more traffic seems to be coming from all directions including I-10, and traveling through the State Highway 181 area to get to places East and West of the state road, while other vehicles clearly are heading home or do some shopping or just trying to get to work on time, which some days, seems to be an unwinnable battle.
During the construction, police from all of the mentioned agencies policed the construction area trying to slow the cars down. The lower speed limit was to protect the workers and give those living along 181, a chance to safely exit their subdivisions without fear of being flattened by a speeding vehicle or worse yet, one of the many dump trucks that often fly down the road.
While police continue to do their best to police State Highway 181 and all of the roads in Baldwin County, the fact is, it’s nearly impossible with the ever-continuing population growth, all of the new roads being added to the area and the dynamics of what once was mostly a rural county, now turned into a regional metroplex.
And Section 11-40-10 of the Code of Alabama 1975, provides for the extraterritorial police jurisdiction of cities. and towns. The police jurisdiction of cities having 6,000 population or more inhabitants as of January 1, 2021, extends for. a distance of 3 miles beyond the corporate limits.
This means that police are being called to respond outside of city limits and into recently annexed areas which could spread police thinner than they already area. Some growing Alabama cities have opted out of this in favor of only patrolling or responding to calls for service within their city boundaries.
SPEEDING, RECKLESS and ACCIDENTS
Our Real-Time News Desk, which is staffed on most days close to twenty-four hours, documents the wrecks, the injuries, and the fatalities on our roads and Interstate in the county.
Almost daily, and often multiple times a day, accidents, many reported with injuries, occur on State Highway 181.
Some of the hotspots along this stretch are at the Eastern Shore Shopping Center entrance in Spanish Fort, the intersections at US 90 in Daphne, and at CR 104 in Fairhope and further South in Fairhope before entering the county jurisdiction.
So, recently, we took a calibrated radar gun operated by a certified radar operator and hit the road during the workday morning traffic, the early afternoon hours, and during the weekend and our results were not surprising.
During the morning, the problems were more than just speeding cars. At the intersection of 181 and CR 64, vehicles routinely went through solid red lights.
Traffic heading east on CR 64 during the morning commute regularly turned right into the Allegri Farm Market often several at a time to avoid the red light at the State Highway 181/CR 64 intersection which is against state law.
While monitoring traffic at this intersection we also clocked vehicle after vehicle traveling above the posted speed limit with the highest recorded speed being 73 mph.
Among the violators who flew through red lights and often were caught speeding were dump trucks and vehicles with trailers that had heavy equipment on them such as backhoes, lawn care equipment, and in one case, a large boat.
These vehicles pose a much higher risk to the general public because like an 18-wheeler, they are much harder to stop and when involved in a high-speed crash often roll over or cause a deep penetration into the other driver’s vehicle causing great bodily harm or frequent deaths.
According to Consumer Reports, when a truck and car collide, the car’s driver is 1.59 times more likely to die than in two-vehicle crashes where no pickup truck is involved.
Trucks can weigh up to 20-30 times more than an average car, magnifying the force exerted during impact. Serious injuries, entrapment, ejections, and fatalities frequently occur in these types of crashes.
In March of 2023, the Daphne Police Department announced that they had created a traffic enforcement unit to patrol the Highway 181 Corridor. On the days that we monitored traffic at two different sections of the road in Daphne, we did not spot any traffic enforcement, however, during previous times, we have seen officers conducting traffic enforcement along this area.
With more proposed building projects along the Daphne stretch of Highway 181, and in the other cities that this route travels through, traffic enforcement, and regular Public Service Announcements, and community education will be the key to preventing more injuries and fatalities.
Our police agencies are understaffed, even those who have recently hired more officers, and picking and choosing where our law enforcement officers get deployed is no easy task.
The Eastern Shore police agencies in conjunction with the county sheriff’s office and ALEA troopers are regularly out there monitoring traffic flow and driver safety issues, conducting traffic enforcement, and investigating the many traffic collisions that occur in Baldwin County daily.
It would be only wishful thinking to ask drivers to police themselves. So, on the other hand, we hope that law enforcement will continue to regularly conduct traffic enforcement, perform D.U.I. checks, and keep the travelers along State Highway 181 safe.
And about that sixth possible police agency that could soon be patrolling the southern reaches of Highway 181 one day, it could be Barnwell. Now experiencing its own sudden growth with new homes and more possible retail coming their way, changes for them are not that far off.
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