A 31-year-old Douglasville man died Thursday afternoon after the SUV he was driving crossed several lanes of Interstate 20 in Cobb County, clipped another vehicle, struck a third, and flipped into a wooded embankment. Eric Patino was ejected during the crash and pronounced dead at the scene.
The crash happened around 4:45 pm on I-20 West just west of Riverside Parkway, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. Patino was driving a 1997 Ford Explorer west in the far-left lane when, for reasons still under investigation, the SUV moved across several westbound lanes, per the preliminary investigation. The Cobb County Police Department's Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, or STEP, Unit is now trying to determine what caused the Explorer to leave its lane.
According to a sequence of events detailed by The Georgia Sun, which cited the case number assigned to the crash, the Explorer spun clockwise after clipping a 2026 Nissan Frontier driven by a 57-year-old Bremen resident. The Explorer then struck the rear passenger side of a 2022 Audi Q7 driven by a 44-year-old Villa Rica resident, which was carrying two passengers ages 48 and 51, before leaving the interstate and entering a vegetated embankment, where it overturned in a wooded area.
No Serious Injuries for Other Drivers
Cobb County police said no one in the other two vehicles was injured in the crash. Patino was pronounced dead at the scene by the Cobb County Medical Examiner's Office, and his family has since been notified of his death.
The STEP Unit, which investigates all fatal and serious injury collisions across the county, regularly uses drone technology to capture aerial photographs and build 3D scene reconstructions before clearing interstate lanes. Cobb County police are asking anyone with information about the crash to contact the STEP Unit at 770-499-3987.
Why Ejection Turns So Deadly
Patino's ejection from the vehicle points to one of the most dangerous outcomes of a serious crash. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data shows that 77% of passenger vehicle occupants who are totally ejected in fatal crashes die from their injuries, while proper seat belt use cuts total ejection rates to roughly 1%. It is not stated in available reports whether Patino was wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
Rollovers themselves carry outsized risk. Federal data compiled by NHTSA shows that while rollovers make up only about 3% of passenger vehicle crashes nationwide, they account for roughly 30% of occupant deaths, and SUVs post the highest rollover fatality rates among passenger vehicles, ranging up to 42% to 57%. In Georgia specifically, the Governor's Office of Highway Safety has found that unrestrained occupants account for roughly 53% to 55% of all traffic deaths statewide, even though unbelted drivers make up only about 12% of motorists on the road.
To drive that point home, the Governor's Office of Highway Safety runs a mobile Rollover Simulator that uses an unbelted crash dummy in a pickup bed to show audiences at schools and community safety fairs how unbelted occupants become projectiles at speeds as low as 35 mph. Under Georgia law, front-seat occupants are required to wear seat belts, a primary enforcement statute that carries a $15 fine for adult violators, though it is classified as a non-moving violation.
An Older SUV Without Modern Stability Controls
The vehicle Patino was driving, a second-generation Ford Explorer built between 1995 and 2001, belongs to a line of SUVs that was the subject of extensive federal safety investigations into rollover stability. Those investigations eventually pushed automakers to add Electronic Stability Control and Roll Stability Control as standard equipment on later Explorer models, technology that was not yet standard when Patino's vehicle was built.
The crash adds to a steady stream of serious collisions on metro Atlanta's interstates. Traffic data compiled by the Georgia Department of Transportation shows the region logs between 30,000 and 33,000 crashes a year, averaging 74 to 95 crashes a day across corridors including I-20, driven in part by heavy commuter traffic and high travel speeds. The investigation into exactly why Patino's Explorer crossed lanes before the fatal chain of collisions remains open.
