Asheville’s Most Dangerous Roads, Part 2: Patton Avenue (VIDEO)

• March 7, 2017
• Car Accidents
• Personal Injury Law
• Slow Down Asheville
• Videos

In this series, Asheville Car Accident Lawyer Lakota R. Denton examines Asheville’s most dangerous roads and intersections, as outlined by data from the NC DOT.    Attorney Denton urges drivers in Asheville to Slow Down, to help reduce the number of pedestrian accidents, ands keep Asheville safe and walkable for our citizens, children and pets and .

Asheville’s Most Dangerous Roads: Patton Avenue

Video Transcript:

Hi, I’m Lakota Denton, with the Slow Down Asheville campaign, and we’re here on Patton Avenue, in Asheville. In our first video, we talked about the intersection of Patton Avenue and Leicester highway.  There is no crosswalk up there, it is a very dangerous intersection. There’s a bus stop, lots of businesses, a grocery store, and no way to safely cross the street for pedestrians.

Now we are about a half a mile down, at the intersection of Florida Avenue and Patton Avenue.   It’s the same situation, there is not a crosswalk at this intersection, there’s a bus stop on either side of this intersection.  And you have 4 lanes of traffic on either side of Patton Avenue. This stretch from Florida Avenue up half a mile to Leicester highway, is one of the most dangerous stretches of roads in Asheville, along with Tunnel Road and Merrimon Avenue.

Between 2007 and 2014, according to the NCDOT, 27 pedestrians were either injured or killed in this stretch of the highway, probably trying to cross this street. Now when you are a pedestrian and trying to cross this street, you have a couple choices: you can either dart across eight lanes of traffic, or you can walk up to Louisiana Avenue to a crosswalk. But even walking up Patton Avenue to find a crosswalk is dangerous itself. There are driveways to parking lots and commercial businesses, and restaurants. And every driveway runs the risk of a car pulling out, or flying in.

And that’s why we are telling people to Slow Down Asheville. Look out for pedestrians, lookout for children, look out for pets, particularly on Patton Avenue, where there is just a ton of traffic, a lot of businesses, and people just tend to go pretty fast. They’re not thinking about looking for pedestrians.

We have passed out over 1000 yellow Slow Down Asheville yard signs, encouraging people to slow down, look out for pedestrians in places like Patton Avenue, and in the side streets where people live.  One of the problems with Patton Avenue is not just that we don’t have enough crosswalks, but that we have so many new people moving into Buncombe County, that we have a ton of traffic, and a ton of pedestrians and this road is just not designed for the amount of people we have.

Between 2010 and 2015, Buncombe County added 15,000 new people.  That’s almost 15,000 new cars, and 15,000 new pedestrians on roads just like Patton Avenue.   That’s why we are encouraging people to slow down when you’re on this road.  Slow down when you approach these intersections.  Just because there is not a crosswalk doesn’t mean people aren’t going to try to cross here. We have bus stops, grocery stores, restaurants here, and people do try to cross this road. So slow down on Patton Avenue, look out for people. 

If you want to pick up another yellow “Slow Down Asheville” street sign from my office, come by at 36 Orchard St.  The signs are free, we’ve given away over 1000 of them in the last year and we have more.