The Habersham County Sheriff’s Office recently shared an update on the department’s strategies to prevent accidents related to speeding and impaired driving on Ga. 365.
The update comes just weeks after another deadly crash on the busy highway, this one a wreck involving a church van that injured six and left an Eastonallee teen dead.
Deputy Phillip Young with the Sheriff’s Office’s Special Operations Unit told AccessWDUN the department, along with other agencies throughout the state, has worked to implement a plan that focuses on encouraging voluntary compliance to safe driving habits within the community. The approach aims to incorporate technology, education, enforcement, and design.
Technology is implemented through a statewide electronic accident reporting system known as Gears of Georgia. The software allows agencies to track contributing factors to accidents; such as locations, times of incidents, the severity of injuries in a crash and more.
“This allows us as an agency to allocate our resources in a most efficient manner to be able to effectively slow speeding motorists down and enforce other violations [that contribute] to high crash corridors in the county,” Deputy Young explained.
The sheriff’s office has collaborated with area schools, local non-profits and other public platforms to create opportunities to talk with experts about highway safety.
“We partner with our our partners with the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Safe Kids, who brings on our Child Passenger Safety Seat technician programs, to deliver this information and educate our public with the best most relevant information we have to keep our roads safe,” he said.
Additionally, the department has continued to emphasize the enforcement of speed limit laws, with the office reportedly issuing roughly 3,400 citations each year. Young also highlighted the department’s participation in statewide efforts to enforce speeding laws on Ga. 365, including Operation Southern Slowdown, which is underway this week in Georgia along with Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee.
“Even with all the efforts of education, and informing the public, there are still those that are in a hurry,” Young explained. “And they disregard safe driving private practices to get where they're going quicker, and they use the speeding violation to do that.”
Each year, the sheriff's office runs an evaluation on the number of accidents in the area and their causes. While the figures for 2024 are incomplete as of July, the county sees an average of over 300 crashes each year. Young said a vast majority of those crashes occurred on the 365 corridor, with many found to be related to speeding. Crashes related to speeding also appeared to occur more frequently at intersections on Ga. 365 with traffic lights.
The most recent fatal wreck was at the highway's intersection with Demorest-Mt.Airy Highway. That accident remains under investigation by the Georgia State Patrol at last report, but Barry Thomas Clark , age 64, of Hartwell, turned himself into the Habersham County Detention Center on July 3 on a charge of first-degree vehicular homicide.
Just over a year prior to that wreck, Ga. 365 saw a fatal accident that killed five people at its intersection with Mt. Zion Road. The July 16, 2023 wreck involved a Ford Explorer driven by Avonlea Holtzclaw, 29, of Dahlonega. She was on Mt. Zion Road attempting to cross 365.
As Holtzclaw, the wife of a Hall County Sheriff's deputy, began to enter the roadway, a Chevrolet Corvette with two occupants was traveling southbound at speeds estimated to be at least 120 miles per hour according to a Georgia State Patrol report. The collision caused an explosion, killing everyone in the accident including Holtzclaw’s two children ages five and six.
Young said he believes there are several contributing factors to accidents on Ga. 365.
“365 is an important artery for Northeast Georgia for traveling to and from work,” Young said. “It's a very important artery for those that live to the south of us that want to come recreate into the mountains. It's also a very important artery for logistics …when you compound volume and necessity, and then we bring in human aspects such as running late for work, running late for an event, excitement to get to a destination, and then some of the things that occur while we're going to destinations to recreate or even after we have departed, we're leaving our destinations impaired, we're leaving for destinations impaired…it's a force multiplier when it comes down to the volume and the crashes and the severity of the crashes.”
While the sheriff's office is trying to implement these strategies on the corridor in the past year, Young said they have seen decreases in accidents related to speeding in the area, with fatalities from crashes in 2024 appearing to be lower than they were around the same time in 2023.
“The fourth aspect that we were using to [reduce] is design,” he explained. “The R-cuts on the southern end of the county that, unfortunately, were not in place whenever the horrific crash happened last year that involved the loss of five people...seem to be working. We are having a reduction in crashes, the manner of the crashes that we do have seem to be less severe when it comes to injury and vehicle damage.”
Young also advised that regardless of the roadway drivers are traveling on, drivers should always be sure to wear seatbelts, drive sober, not use cell phones, and follow area speed limits.
“We're going to continue to keep working hard,” Young said. “Any fatality is unacceptable for our Sheriff's Office. And, we're going to continue to reduce those numbers by getting the word out and getting those violators off the street whenever they're in no state to drive, such as impairment.”
