A 61-year-old Glen Allen man is dead after his car veered off Ashland Road in Hanover County and slammed into several trees late Friday night, and investigators still don't know what caused the vehicle to leave the roadway. The crash happened around 10:03 p.m. in the 15200 block of Ashland Road, according to authorities, and the driver was pronounced dead before he could even be transported to a hospital.
Hanover County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the single-vehicle crash and found that the car, a 2011 Mini Cooper Countryman, had been traveling west before it ran off the left side of the road and struck multiple trees, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch. Hanover Fire and EMS personnel responded to the scene and pronounced the driver deceased prior to transport, as reported by Henrico Citizen. The driver was later identified as 61-year-old Robert E. Short of Glen Allen, who was the sole occupant of the vehicle.
Deputies have not said what caused Short's Mini Cooper to leave the road, and the case remains open as investigators try to piece together what happened in the moments before the crash. The sheriff's office is asking anyone with information about the collision or the events leading up to it to call investigators at 804-365-6110.
A Road With a History of Deadly Wrecks
Friday's crash is not the first fatal wreck to strike this stretch of Hanover County roadway. Back in March 2023, an SUV driver was killed on Ashland Road at Cauthorne Road in a broadside collision with a dump truck, according to the Hanover County Sheriff's Office. The nearby intersection of Mountain Road and Ashland Road also ranked as the second-highest crash location in the county in 2022, logging eight motor vehicle accidents that year, per data published in the county's 2023-2024 Community Health Assessment.
Hanover County's traffic fatality numbers have historically outpaced the state as a whole. Between 2016 and 2020, the county recorded 71 motor vehicle crash fatalities, an age-adjusted death rate of 13.3 per 100,000 residents that exceeded Virginia's statewide rate of 9.8 per 100,000, according to county health data. In 2024 alone, Hanover logged 1,963 total motor vehicle crashes and 12 traffic fatalities, per the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
Statewide Crash Numbers Keep Climbing
The trend isn't isolated to Hanover. Statewide traffic crash deaths in Virginia rose from 907 in 2023 to 918 in 2024, while total collisions climbed from 127,597 to 129,244 over the same period, according to Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, citing official state data. Ashland Road itself, like all public roads in Hanover County outside the town of Ashland, falls under the maintenance authority of the Virginia Department of Transportation rather than county government, which oversees everything from ditch upkeep to pavement repairs and capital road projects countywide.
Short's death comes just days after another fatal traffic incident shook the Richmond region, when a Henrico firefighter was killed in a hit-and-run on I-64/I-95. As Hanover investigators continue working to determine why Short's car left the road, residents along the Ashland Road corridor are once again confronting a stretch of pavement with a long and troubling history.
