A car sped through Morehouse College's campus early Friday morning, crashed into a light pole, and overturned after narrowly missing two Spelman College students who ran to get out of its path. The crash happened around 12:25 a.m. in the 800 block of Westview Drive SW, a public street that cuts directly through the heart of the Atlanta University Center.
Student Raylon Ellis said the car narrowly missed the two Spelman students, who ran from the side of the street to get away from it, according to WSB-TV. Ellis said the crash illustrates a chronic speeding issue on the streets that run through campus, and called for signs or other measures to discourage drivers from speeding through the area.
Fellow student Kollin Bethea told the station he was eating with friends at a table when he heard a screeching sound. He looked up in time to see sparks coming from one of the car's tires just before it flipped. Cars have been coming through campus fast and weaving, Bethea said, adding that drivers should not be speeding in what is, in effect, a school zone.
Police Have Yet to Detail Injuries or Occupants
As of the station's report, the Atlanta Police Department had not responded to inquiries about how many people were inside the car or the extent of any injuries. WSB-TV said it had also reached out to Morehouse College for more information. Those gaps leave key questions about the crash unanswered for now.
The stretch of Westview Drive SW where the car overturned runs through the middle of the Atlanta University Center, the historic consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities that includes Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Students routinely cross the road on foot between dormitories and academic buildings, according to Morehouse College's own campus safety materials.
A Street Built Wide, With a History of Friction Over Fixes
Westview Drive's design has been a point of contention before. In 2017, the City of Atlanta removed a newly installed protected bicycle lane along the corridor after community pushback over how it was installed, according to Propel ATL. Urban planners have noted that the resulting wide roadway facilitates higher vehicle speeds, and the group's analysis of state crash data has placed nearby corridors like Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard SW and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SW within Atlanta's High-Injury Network, where fewer than 8% of city streets account for 88% of the city's traffic fatalities.
City planning documents have flagged the same corridor before. The Neighborhood Planning Unit T master framework recommended installing traffic-calming measures, high-visibility crosswalks, reflective strips, and updated lighting along Westview Drive and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard specifically to improve pedestrian safety around the Atlanta University Center. That plan has not translated into the physical changes students are now asking for.
Jurisdiction Complicates Any Quick Fix
Any solution faces a tangle of overlapping authority. Westview Drive SW is a public city street that happens to run through private university grounds, meaning speed limits and physical modifications there fall under the Atlanta Department of Transportation and Atlanta City Council rather than Morehouse campus security. Morehouse does restrict vehicle access at its secondary campus gates between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., but public streets like Westview remain open through campus around the clock and fall under city traffic jurisdiction.
Even automated enforcement, often pitched as a straightforward fix, comes with strict limits. Under Georgia Code § 40-14-18, automated speed cameras in designated school zones can only issue civil fines of $75 for a first violation and $125 for subsequent violations, and citations trigger only when a vehicle exceeds the posted limit by at least 11 mph. Georgia lawmakers tightened those rules further in 2024, requiring municipalities to submit annual revenue reports and barring automated enforcement on four-lane roads that lack pedestrian crosswalks, a shift Hoodline detailed in its report on Georgia's pedestrian death rankings.
This is not the first time reckless driving has spilled onto campus streets. In October 2024, an Atlanta Police pursuit of a stolen vehicle ended when the suspect abandoned the car on Spelman Street inside the Atlanta University Center footprint before fleeing on foot. That same month, Morehouse mourned a junior student killed in a rollover crash on nearby Interstate 20, a loss that still shapes how seriously students take vehicle safety on and around campus.
For now, the overturned car on Westview Drive has left students like Ellis and Bethea pressing for something tangible — signs, humps, anything that might slow drivers down before the next near-miss becomes something worse.
