Florida

Interstate 75 is one of the longest north-south interstates in the United States, running approximately 1,786 miles from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, at the Canadian border to Hialeah, Florida, near Miami. For commercial drivers, I-75 is a primary artery connecting the Midwest manufacturing belt and Great Lakes region to Florida’s population centers and Gulf ports. The full length of the route is demanding, but two sections in particular — Florida and Georgia — concentrate the corridor’s most acute dangers.

US Highway 17 is not a highway that appears on most national dangerous-road lists. It lacks the dramatic mountain passes of I-70 or the oilfield chaos of US-285. It is, in most sections, a moderately traveled two-lane or four-lane road through the coastal South — passing through resort towns, fishing villages, agricultural land, and coastal wetlands from Virginia to Florida. That ordinariness is part of what makes it dangerous.

The highway’s accident rate reflects a confluence of hazards that individually seem manageable but in combination produce consistent, serious crashes: poor infrastructure, varied and unpredictable traffic, inadequate lighting, and terrain that limits sight distances in ways that drivers unfamiliar with the route don’t anticipate.