Southeast

Interstate 26 runs approximately 220 miles from I-40 in Asheville, North Carolina southeast through Spartanburg, Columbia, and the South Carolina Lowcountry to Charleston on the coast. It is a major freight corridor connecting the Southeast’s interior to the Port of Charleston — one of the busiest container ports on the East Coast — and carries substantial commercial vehicle traffic year-round.

Between 2000 and 2010, I-26 in South Carolina recorded 286 accidents that claimed 325 lives — a fatality rate that placed it among the most dangerous interstates in the Southeast. The causes were specific, structural, and in many cases preventable.

For commercial truck drivers passing through or around Atlanta, Georgia, Interstate 285 presents a category of hazard that is entirely different from the mountain passes and desert heat that dominate most dangerous highway discussions. I-285 is an urban loop — 63 miles of freeway encircling Atlanta — that carries nearly 2 million vehicles per day at some of its most congested points. The danger here is not weather, grades, or isolation. It is volume, speed, complexity, and the unforgiving consequences of getting a merge wrong at highway speed in heavy traffic.