Why rubber meets the road

Michael Smith wasn’t expecting to swerve around dangerous debris when he drove from Nashville to Atlanta last week for a job interview.

“I had to dodge two tire scraps on my way to Atlanta last week,” he said. “I think it’s dangerous.”

After he crossed into Georgia, the chunks of rubber actually bounced into his lane when other cars ran over them ahead of him.

“Those tires aren’t just rubber,” he said. “They have metal and sharp edges. I think they could come through my window.”

And there are plenty of shredded, coiled chunks of blown-out tire rubber and waist-high grass along Georgia’s roads, proof that very few hands are caring for the state’s network of state highways and interstates.

“Frankly, we are in a situation where we have to do more with less resources,” said Georgia Department of Transportation spokesman Mohamed Arafa. “It is no secret that statewide budget cuts in 2009 and this year have created several new challenges for Georgia DOT.”

Georgia, like most states, has faced shrinking revenue since the national economic meltdown. But Georgia’s cuts to transportation have been drastic, a 50 percent slice from $5 billion in 2006 to $2.4 billion in 2008, the latest years that figures are available.

Arafa didn’t have the final budget figure for the 2009-10 fiscal year, but he said it would be down even more.

Previously, the state Department of Transportation also spent $15 million in contracts with various groups such as state prisons, cities and counties for road maintenance. But those contracts have been canceled, Arafa said.

Georgia has about 48,000 miles of asphalt — from the swamps of South Georgia to the North Georgia mountains — to keep clean, including federal interstates, he said, but the state has just one maintenance employee for every 28 miles of road.

There are about 1,700 state maintenance employees to cut grass and pick up trash across the entire state. They are also responsible for repairing signs, striping roads and cleaning up after car wrecks and damaging storms.

And the number of workers is dwindling.

“Some of the department’s skilled workers are retiring and are not replaced at this time due the statewide hiring freeze policy,” Arafa said. “All these circumstances make these maintenance activities even more challenging.”

While Georgia is watching debris pile up, Tennessee is increasing money for roadside cleanup, said Department of Transportation spokeswoman Jennifer Flynn.

In the Chattanooga region, Tennessee spent about $2 million last year on cleanup and maintenance and plans to spend about 5 percent more this year. Statewide, Tennessee spends $10.7 million on road inspection and trash collection.

SAFETY RISK

For drivers on Georgia roads, it’s not just the ugliness of black, coiled-up strips of retreads on the shoulders or waist-high grass along the roadsides. They worry about tires and other debris flying up and striking their cars while they’re traveling 70 mph on the interstate.

“It looks like a scrap yard,” Smith said.

“We drive from Georgia to Ohio all the time, and Georgia is the worst,” said Ruth Hutchinson, of Marietta, Ga., who stopped in Tennessee this week on a recent trip. “It seems very dangerous, too.”

It’s nerve-racking even if you just have to pull over onto the shoulder of the road for a minute, said Elmer Hutchinson, her husband.

“I wouldn’t want try to get over ... with all those tires and other trash,” he said.

“Clearly this is the kind of thing, that if it’s on the side of the road, it’s a safety risk when you need to get onto the side of the road,” said Edward Crowell, president and CEO of Georgia Motor Trucking Association.

The peak season for tire blowouts is summer when roads and tires are hot and retreaded tires — which are found on all sorts of vehicles — are more likely to melt loose, fly off the vehicle and strike other motorists.

“I’ll stand up for the industry here,” Crowell said. “The only study I know of ... found the vast majority of the rubber came from car tires.”

While there is safety risk for motorists, allowing adequate space between vehicles can mitigate most of the danger because it allows for greater reaction time if a piece of rubber comes bouncing out from under a vehicle ahead of you, one insurance industry official said.

“Motorists have to be more careful,” said David Colmans, executive director of the Georgia Insurance Information Service. “That’s one of the reasons we get so concerned about people following too closely.”

Mechanics’ dream

Local body shops say they see a handful of repairs every month from customers who run over tires or scraps of retreads.

The damage ranges from simple scrapes and damaged bumpers to some undercarriage damage, ripped-off oil filters and crunched exhaust systems, said John Gray, manager of Kelly Collision Center in Chattanooga.

“I don’t know that Georgia ever did a very good job picking up all the trash anyway,” Gray said.

Repairs range from just a few hundred dollars to nearly $2,000 if the damage is extensive, but insurance pays for most repairs, he said.

Damage caused by the tires and other debris keeps a steady stream of business into local body shops, he said, though he hasn’t noticed an increase lately.

Motorists say the state should be looking out for their financial interests by cleaning up the roads.

“By not clearing the roads, they are passing the buck to us,” said Larry Kennedy, of Rossville. “If they can’t afford to protect us from this stuff, then we ought to pay less taxes.”

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