Seen in the AJC:
Eleven years before an apparently confused bus driver exited I-75, careened off Northside Drive and killed seven people, state highway engineers planning signs near the ramp had a problem. They wouldn’t have a pole there big enough to hang the two HOV signs they had designed, one pointing to the Northside Drive ramp and another that would make clear which lane continued on the highway.
So they just left one off.
That last-minute change, referred to in a memo, came to light during an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of thousands of state documents regarding the design and construction of the deadly exit ramp. The one sign that went up points buses and car pools toward the exit ramp to “Northside Drive” —- without saying it’s an exit. The sign that was omitted would have pointed drivers to the adjacent HOV through lane.
Federal investigators in March said the bus driver probably mistook the exit ramp for a through lane. A national road-sign expert declared the lone sign confusing and “potentially a killer.”
I mentioned the incident in my 18 March 2007 Highway Feature of the Week.
It’s been a long time since I drove the freeways in Atlanta, so I have to plead unfamiliarity with HOV ramp signing practices there. However, I do note that around here in Hartford, the HOV exits do generally only show the ramp, although they are clearly marked as “EXIT”.
Update: The AJC has a second article pointing out that there is also a signage error at the ill-fated interchange, and that GDOT has been very slow to fix it. A picture of the signs in question can be found at the AJC site.
Again, except for the misplaced “HOV Exit 250 ¼ Mile” sign on the ramp (which shouldn’t have influenced the presumably sleepy driver), that is very similar to what’s seen on the HOV lanes of I-84 and I-91 around Hartford.