Central’s Roads Amount to Criminal Negligence

With Steep Dropoffs And No Shoulders, Central Roads Give Reckless Speeders Control of Your Life

by Woody Jenkins

CENTRAL — Another innocent teenager has been killed as a result of what has to be considered nothing less than criminal negligence.

Everyday in Central, tens of thousands of motorists cruise up and down the “roads” of Central as though it is a normal and natural thing for people to drive on narrow two-lane roads — roads with steep dropoffs on either side — roads with no shoulders.

These are roads that are nothing less than deathtraps. Yet, there are no protests, no marches on the Capitol, no letters to the editor, seemingly no outrage.  “It’s always been like this out here,” I’ve been told.

These deathtraps — Greenwell Springs Road, Sullivan Road, Hooper Road, Wax Road, and Denham Road — have already killed scores of people.  There’s one spot on Sullivan Road where 11 people have been killed in the past 20 years.  Yet, little seems to change.

Today it is the family of Phillip Abington who is grieving.  The heartbreak they are enduring is overwhelming.  But the Abingtons are just one family in a long line of Central families who have been destroyed by these criminal excuses for roads.

Men, the lives of your mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and grandbabies are at stake!  The beautiful Central High cheerleaders in the photo at left take their lives in their hands every time they turn on to Wax Road or any of the other narrow deathtraps out here. Women, your men leave the house and may never return.  Your children are at the mercy of every alcoholic or drug-head racing down the “road.”

In modern times, heavily traveled roads have four lanes and shoulders.  The biggest reason is not speed.  It’s safety.  When you have a lot of traffic, it’s dangerous.  When a drunk is coming down the road straight at you, a four-lane road with shoulders usually allows you to swerve out of his way.

But in Central, our roads provide no room to get out of the way.  They provide no room for error of any kind. These roads are killers, and they will continue to kill until they are replaced with decent, modern highways that are appropriate for the traffic counts.

Engineering studies have for years justified building good roads in Central, but the money has been spent elsewhere.  Why?  Apathy by our people.  If you won’t step up and demand good roads, they simply won’t be built, because people in other areas are demanding them.  You haven’t demanded them, and you haven’t gotten them.  Good things don’t just happen.  Somebody has to make them happen.  The powers that be in Baton Rouge care nothing for Central.  Witness their push for the Loop, which would do nothing to solve our traffic problems.  Yet, those same people ignore widening of Greenwell Springs, Hooper, and Wax.  They ignore the need to build a bridge across the Amite at Hooper.

So blame your elected officials.  Or blame yourself for not demanding that they solve the problems.

Or, more likely, do absolutely nothing until the call comes in from the Sheriff’s Office.  “M’am, I have bad news.  There’s been a serious accident…”