VALDOSTA — It was a nightmare.

It hardly seemed real — but it was. 

The semi truck barreled through the red light and plowed into Mike Black’s car, smashing glass and crunching the metal frame. He and his vehicle were no match against the gargantuan semi.

Black was on his way to pick up his son from daycare. Instead, he ended up in a coma that lasted 11 days.

The June 2015 accident in Live Oak, Fla., changed his life forever. The near-death crash left him with a traumatic brain injury.

His neural wires were all mixed up and ripped to shreds, causing his temperature to suddenly spike to 104 degrees as his blood pressure violently fluctuated.

He had to relearn everything.

“Imagine your brain is like a spider’s web,” he said. “Then imagine a hand just tearing the web down. That’s the best way I can describe it.

“It took me five tries just to swallow a glass of water.”

Now 46, Black’s body has healed but his mind has not. His wife, Kristie, said he is more like a teenager and that when he wants to do something, he can’t focus on anything else until he sees the action through.

Even though he is out of the hospital and back home, Mike said the scars on his brain remain and will never fade.

Thomas County resident Melanie Hester knows all too well the wounds a traffic accident can inflict on the mind.

In 1990, she was a college student driving to Valdosta on Highway 84 when the worst happened.

She ran off the road to the right and over-corrected while trying to regain control. Her car jerked the other way, flipped three times and landed upside down in the median.

A Brooks County resident found her and she ended up at South Georgia Medical Center with a traumatic brain injury that, like Black, plunged her into a coma for several days.

When Hester regained consciousness, her vision was damaged and her emotions rampant from the brain injury.

Her injuries even triggered a seizure while she was at the hospital, and when she returned home, she was like a newborn learning how to live.

“I couldn’t walk, bathe myself, and I didn’t really know my family,” said Hester, who is now the public relations coordinator for Thomas County Schools.

The side effects — mental and physical — lasted for years, and her brain is permanently marked with scar tissue.

Both Hester and Black credit God for their miraculous survival, after facing horrific accidents and managing to escape death.

But many others never make it out alive. In Georgia and Florida, traffic fatalities have spiked significantly in recent years.

Georgia’s 2014 count of 1,170 surged to 1,432 in 2015 and 1,561 in 2016, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Florida recorded 3,158 traffic deaths in 2016, up from 2,941 in 2015 and 2,497 in 2014, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

GDOT’s Scott Higley attributes the rise to a buzzword that people have heard a lot lately, something that’s been at the center of public awareness campaigns all across the country in recent years: distracted driving.

“It seems to be the overwhelming cause of a number of these crashes, and it’s very alarming to us,” Higley said.

And it’s not just teenagers and inexperienced drivers falling prey to distracted-driving accidents. 

“We’re seeing alarming rates even among older drivers,” Higley said.

With rapidly advancing technology fueling the ability and desire to be more intensely connected to the digital world, possible distractions from smart cars and smartphones reach new frenzied heights with each passing day.

In the SunLight Project coverage area — Thomasville, Valdosta, Dalton, Tifton, Milledgeville and Moultrie, Ga., and Live Oak, Jasper and Mayo, Fla., along with the surrounding counties — law-enforcement agencies agree that distracted driving is one of the greatest dangers on the road.

Drunk driving, speeding and not wearing a seatbelt also top the list of contributing factors in accident-related deaths and injuries. 

Sometimes the traffic accident deaths occur in random locations, but there are definitely a few trouble spots where a large number of serious wrecks occur. 

The Danger Zones

Higley said GDOT sees deaths on all types of roads, from quiet rural routes to raging four-lane highways. There aren’t specific areas where deaths are more common, he said.

But certain communities in the region contain roads and intersections that are more deadly than others.

In the city of Dalton, the area on Chattanooga Road near and just north of the Tibbs Road intersection, at the northern edge of the city, may be the most frequent site of fatal accidents from the past few years, said Officer David Saylors of the Dalton Police Department.

That stretch of road not only has heavy traffic but also has a curve and a hill. It is near an interstate exit, so some of the drivers may not be aware of those features.

Dalton only had one traffic death in 2016, down from three in 2015. One person has died in a traffic accident this year so far.

Suwannee County in Florida has numerous fatality hot spots along Interstate 10, Sheriff Sam St. John said. There are more in Branford near U.S. Route 27 and State Road 247.

St. John blames an increase in overall traffic for the deaths at such spots.

Suwannee County saw 20 people die from traffic accidents in 2016, double from the 10 deaths reported in 2015.

Thomas County doesn’t have hot spots; rather, traffic fatalities happen “all over the map,” said Sgt. Tommy Peeples, Georgia State Patrol Post 12 commander.

“There is no one concentrated area,” he said, noting that fatal wrecks have occurred from rural roads to state highways.

For 2016, Thomas County had a total of nine fatal crashes. One crash claimed two lives.

The number of fatal crashes each year runs in the mid-20s for Post 12, which includes Thomas, Grady, Mitchell and Colquitt counties.

For 2016, a total of 25 fatal wrecks occurred between Post 12’s four counties. The number of fatal wrecks within Post 12’s area remained the same for 2015, and decreased from the 29 that occurred in 2014.

While no traffic fatalities were reported in 2016 within the city of Thomasville, the year netted a total of 1,484 accidents for the Thomasville City Police, crashes that ranged from major collisions to minor fender benders.

Lowndes County contains fatality hot spots all along Interstate 75 where the highway intersects other roads.

Road deaths in Lowndes have remained steady the past few years, with 13 in 2016 and 2015 and 12 in 2014.

The city of Valdosta also saw a plateau of traffic deaths in recent years, with five in 2016 and 2015 and three in 2014.

Cpl. Chris Kelch of Georgia State Patrol Post 31 said in addition to the interstate, his office is always working serious crashes on major roads in Lowndes, such as North Valdosta and Bemiss roads and anywhere that state routes and county roads intersect, such as Highway 122 and Cat Creek Road.

The Causes of Death

“This right here is everybody’s worst enemy,” Capt. Chuck McDonald said, holding up a cell phone, noting the tendency for drivers to get complacent behind the wheel.

McDonald is the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office patrol division commander.

After decades of battling drunk driving, which remains a large threat, public safety agencies are zeroing in on distracted driving, with cell phones being the biggest contributor.

And hands-free conversations aren’t necessarily safer, said Sgt. Tommy Peeples, Georgia State Patrol Post 12 commander.

Beyond the danger of talking on the phone is texting behind the wheel, an absorbent pastime for many that often turns deadly when done while driving.

Peeples said he regularly spots drivers texting away — when he’s in his personal pickup truck. When he and other troopers are in their patrol cars, not so much. 

“You don’t realize just taking your eyes off the road how far you will travel,” he said. “You’ve got to really pay attention.”

For Colquitt County roads, 2014 was one of the most deadly in recent memory, with 17 deaths for the year. There was at least one death in each month that year, with the exception of February.

Deaths were down slightly by three in 2015, with GSP troopers working wrecks with a toll of 13 deaths and the Moultrie Police Department registering one fatal accident in March.

For 2016 the number of deaths dropped to eight in seven fatal wrecks. 

So far in 2017, Peeples’ Post 12 has reached eight road fatalities.

The city of Milledgeville only had one traffic death each year in 2016 and 2015, but Major John Davis of the Milledgeville Police Department also blames eyes glued to cell phones for the rise in deaths statewide.

More than half of the fatal automobile accidents in Georgia so far this year involved a single car leaving the lane and hitting something such as a tree or power pole. Often the crash reports say the driver was on the phone or otherwise distracted, said Officer David Saylors of the Dalton Police Department.

Half of Tift County’s eight fatal traffic accidents (resulting in 11 deaths) involved only one car. Of those accidents, three involved people not wearing seat belts, another big factor in road deaths.

“You definitely have a better chance of survival if you are wearing a seat belt,” Saylors said. “The numbers I have seen indicate that, across the state, 61 percent of the people who died in automobile crashes (this year) have not been wearing their seatbelts.”

The monster that is distracted driving stretches far beyond cell phone use.

It could be goofing off with a passenger, adjusting the radio or fiddling with the GPS. It could even be munching on a hamburger or reaching down to grab a drink.

“While that’s not illegal … still to look down at 55 miles per hour to see where your drink is at so you can grab hold of it, you’re taking your eyes off the roadway and you’d be surprised at how far that vehicle can travel in a split-second,” Davis said.

Georgia law does try to limit distractions from companions for young drivers. For the first six months of holding a license, 16-year-old drivers are prohibited from having any passengers younger than 21 in the car with the exception of family members. For the next six months, they can chauffeur no more than three people under 21.

Speeding plays a role in a good number of accidents police see, Peeples said, and a lot of accidents involve a driver rear-ending another, which also indicates lack of focus on the task of driving a ton or two of metal at highway speed.

Speeding can also cause drivers to lose control more easily in bad weather, often with deadly consequences.

Impaired driving — driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol — has long been a leading cause of road deaths, and even though campaigns and efforts to curb that trend start bombarding people at a young age, the problem still infects community after community.

In fact, every 90 seconds a person in the U.S. is killed or injured in a drunk driving crash, said Cpl. Chris Kelch of Georgia State Patrol Post 31.

Of the 42 traffic fatalities Lowndes County saw from 2014 until now, more than a third involved drugs or alcohol.

Kelch said the hiring shortage that the GSP and other law-enforcement agencies are facing indirectly contributes to more death on the road.

In recent years, law enforcement has been at the center of tumultuous headlines and an increasingly negative spotlight. As a result, it’s “open season” on law enforcement, as Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress recently said, and not as many people are willing to don the badge.

Kelch’s Post 31, which serves Lowndes, Brooks, Lanier and Echols counties, hasn’t seen a new trooper since 2010, he said.

Kelch said the shortage means the GSP has fewer troopers to patrol roads, so there is less of a visible deterrent to crimes that often result in death, such as DUI.

As driving deaths tick up across Georgia and Florida, governments and safety agencies are working hard to freeze and reverse that upward trend.

The Remedies

“The sad thing about so many of these fatalities is they are 100 percent preventable,” said Scott Higley with the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Last year, GDOT launched its “Drive Alert. Arrive Alive.” campaign to remind people that “safety is everyone’s responsibility.”

The campaign pushes out stats to the masses and offers tips for safe driving via billboards, posters, social media sites, ads and other major mediums of communication.

“We all become distracted, we all sometimes are not paying as much attention as we need to on the roadways, but it’s really causing people to think twice about the decisions that they’re making when they’re behind the wheel,” Higley said.

And the key to clearing the roads of fatal accidents is not some great mystery, he said. It’s the simple rules everyone learned in driver’s ed: be aware of your surroundings; stay focused on the road; don’t drive above the speed limit; if you’re a pedestrian, look both ways before you cross the street; etc.

A common sentiment law enforcement share with Higley is that most accidents — fatal and non-fatal — are avoidable with a few simple steps.

“Slow down, buckle up, put the phone down, and concentrate on driving,” Peeples said.

Melanie Hester said one of the best things a driver can do is taking a few seconds to click the seatbelt into place.

“So many people are thrown from their vehicles during crashes. I probably wouldn’t be here if I had not been wearing my seat belt, and if I had made it, I may have been paralyzed or worse,” she said, almost three decades after a car crash nearly took her life.

Major Davis said drivers should pull over to a safe area off the roadway to text or talk on the phone.

“It only takes a few minutes to pull to the side of the road when you have to make a call or text,” he said. “Once you’re involved in that (crash or collision) there’s nothing we can do to take that back.

“There’s certainly nothing so important worth risking your life or someone else’s life over by texting or talking on the telephone.”

Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John said focusing more intensely on fatality hot spots — by writing more tickets and patrolling more during work commutes when deaths are more common — goes a long way in cutting down on accidents and fatalities.

His office has also paired up with the “Click It or Ticket” and the “Drive Alert. Arrive Alive.” campaigns to educate people on the dangers of texting and drinking while driving along with the need to drive at a moderate speed.

Communities regularly make improvements to roads and intersections to alleviate congestion and increase safety. Such upgrades include installing medians and turn lanes, widening roads, and adding more signs and traffic lights.

Lowndes County Clerk Paige Dukes said governments have to adhere to federal safety standards when building roads and intersections and that those rules help to ensure a safe traffic flow from the get-go.

However, she added that the safest roads and intersections can still turn deadly if people resort to distracted or impaired driving.

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Thomas Lynn, Jordan Barela, Charles Oliver, Billy Hobbs, Alan Mauldin and Eve Guevara, along with the writer, team leader John Stephen.

To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.