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The 17-year-old Ehrhardt man was driving his mom's 1998 Ford on Chestnut Street approaching St. Matthews Road. Another car cuts in front of him. The two cars collide, doing about $1,000 damage to each.
About 45 minutes later, same intersection, a Columbia man's car strikes another vehicle before careening off and hitting yet another car. About $5,000 damage to each car.
Both happened Thursday afternoon. Both are part of a growing number of statistics that have prompted local authorities to push for increased awareness of Orangeburg's five most collision-prone intersections.
"What we're looking for is just to make sure people are more aware," Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Chief Wendell Davis said. "At any intersection, we want people to be careful and not rely on the assumption that everybody is going to notice or be paying attention."
Using data collected over the first eight months in 2006 and 2007, there has been a significant increase in the number of accidents at the five worst intersections.
When figures for the two like periods are compared, shown is an increase in the number of collisions by 18. In 2006 there were 102 collisions at the five worst, while this year there have been 120.
"You can see, based on the figures, that accidents at these intersections are up 20 percent in one year," ODPS Capt. Mike Adams said. "With that in mind, we're going to redouble our enforcement efforts significantly at these intersections."
Injuries during that same period have actually dropped by two. In 2006, 42 people were injured in those collisions, while 40 have been injured this year.
The figures show the worst intersection remains Columbia Road and Chestnut Street, followed by Chestnut Street and St. Matthews Road and Broughton Street and Chestnut.
"We have three intersections on Chestnut that are in the top five," Davis said. "A number of factors contribute to that, including speed and inattention."
Davis said cell phones and other activities that distract are contributors to collisions at these junctions.
Regardless of the causes, police have already stepped up efforts in an attempt to get Garden City motorists to slow down and pay more attention. A mobile electronic sign has been rotated to each of the accident-prone intersections.
However, more officers will be out to nab speeders and slow traffic down, and those officers may not be visible.
It's called the tandem enforcement unit and it's being employed across the city. The way it works is an officer, called a spotter, is attired as a road or construction worker, possibly a utility lineman.
The biggest noticeable difference will be that the new "lineman" will be using a hand-held radar gun.
"What we have done is use some unorthodox methods," Capt. Ed Conner said. "The spotter has the radar and the other officers make the traffic stop."
One such campaign at the Columbia Road and Chestnut intersection slowed down quite a few motorists.
"We wrote 33 (citations) in one hour on Columbia Road," Sgt. Jeff Mitchum said. "That was a joint operation with Highway Patrol. ... We wrote 43 on Broughton in one hour."
That tandem enforcement campaign goes back into effect Oct. 1.
Officials say writing tickets isn't the goal of the campaign, safety is. The reason behind the increased effort is "increased accidents at intersections; complaints that the department gets about people running red lights. I get four or five a week," Conner said.
"We want people to know what we're doing, we want them to know we're enforcing the traffic laws," Davis said. "Our goal is to increase safety. Sometimes you have to use different countermeasures to alleviate the situation."
• For a complete list of the five worst intersections in Orangeburg, click on the related link on the right side of this page.
T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.