The St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Office says that crashes involving injuries and fatalities are down along Hwy 90 thanks to the J-Turn project.
The J-turns were implemented along Highway 90 from Berwick to Ricohoc in order to help alleviate the number of crashes and traffic issues.
The Sheriff's Office says that they have noticed that anytime a traffic advisory is posted for the area, they received feedback as to whether or not the J-Turns have helped the situation or made it worse.
"Opinions vary from our followers. Therefore, we decided to get some statistical information that would give us some idea of what is happening with the J-Turns," the sheriff's office reports.
DOTD provided data from 2013, 2014, and 2015, (the three years prior to the project) and has shared three categories of data: Number of crashes, number of injuries, and number of fatalities. They have an average per year based on the three years of data compiled.
They then used a 12-month period of info following the completion of the J-Turn project to pull data to compare to the yearly averages before the project.
"This is only 1 year of data. However, it will give us an idea of the trend since the project was completed."
Three years after the project, the DOTD will do another comparison which will be much more solid data in which to evaluate.
The St. Mary Sheriff's Office says that the following is date in the first year after the project was completed:
1.) Number of crashes: down 36%.
2.) Number of injuries: down 47%
3.) Number of fatalities: down 46%
"We encourage people to slow down in this area of Highway 90 and be careful of other motorists. Exercising caution and using defensive driving techniques when driving will help more than anything else in lowering the number of crashes on our roadways," the sheriff's office says.
