State transportation officials and local emergency responders say cars crossing the highway heading to and from Beaufort create a dangerous situation where carelessness can lead to injury or death. From 2000 to 2004, there were 71 accidents at or near the intersection, with 46 injuries and one death, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
The reconfiguration of the intersection of U.S. 21 and U.S. 17 on the county's northwest outskirts is part of state efforts to widen 22 miles of U.S. 17 from Gardens Corner to Jacksonboro in Colleton County through a $150 million project that remains largely unfunded.
The new intersection would send traffic heading from Charleston to Beaufort off a right-hand exit ramp and up to an overpass heading to Beaufort, while traffic heading from Beaufort to Interstate 95 would take the overpass to a merge lane on the right side of traffic.
The county proposed $600,000 in improvements for the intersection in a failed November sales tax referendum. The plan would have included a similar exit ramp that looped back to the Gardens Corner intersection and crossed the highway at a lighted intersection.
"It would work for the short term, but 20 years out, it's failing," project manager Wilson Elgin said of the county plan. Specific traffic count information was not available.
County Councilman Mark Generales said state plans for a long-term fix likely are prudent.
"If the intention is to not have to come back and repeat work, it's hard for me to argue with that," he said.
In a complicated intersection where the northbound lane narrows as cars heading south from Beaufort cross traffic, carelessness has caused several accidents and fatalities, said Sheldon Fire Chief Buddy Jones.
"They're pulling out in front of people," he said.
Thirty-nine of the accidents from 2000 to 2004 were attributed to a failure to yield the right of way.
Nai Be Lavetta Dagin, 35, died last August when she pulled onto U.S. 17 without yielding to an oncoming tractor-trailer. Nearly seven years earlier, 38-year-old Kathleen Rivers Alston made the same deadly mistake.
When first prepared in the 1990s, state plans for the intersection included moving the intersection north up the highway with looping exit and entrance ramps for U.S. 17 south filling marsh and wetlands that blanket lands west of the highway.
Although Elgin didn't have a cost estimate for the '90s plans, he said the new proposal's linear exit ramp that hugs the highway likely trims the cost and reduces the impact on the marshes.