A sedan crossed into oncoming traffic on LaVista Road in Tucker Thursday afternoon and slammed head-on into an SUV, sending three people to the hospital with two of them critically injured. DeKalb County police responded to the collision in the 3800 block of LaVista Road at about 3:10 p.m.
Police said the sedan was traveling east on LaVista Road when it crossed into the westbound lanes and struck the SUV head-on, according to decaturish.com. A police spokesperson told the outlet that officers located a crash involving a sedan and an SUV and that the investigation remains ongoing.
The driver and passenger in the sedan, both adults, suffered critical injuries and were taken to a hospital, the outlet reported. The driver of the SUV was also taken to a hospital but with non-life-threatening injuries. No further details on the people involved, their identities or their current conditions were available.
A Stretch of Road Already Under Scrutiny
Thursday's wreck lands on a corridor that neighbors and local officials have already flagged as dangerous. Earlier in September, a 19-year-old Georgia Power contractor named Dylan Wayland was killed while setting up flags along an S-curve on LaVista Road when he was struck by a van, according to DeKalb County Police as reported by Atlanta News First.
Residents near North Druid Hills Road and the Toco Hills Shopping Center have pointed to an S-curve, a merge point and fast-moving traffic exiting the shopping center as persistent hazards along that section of LaVista Road, the station reported. In response to Wayland's death, the Georgia Department of Transportation said it was pulling information on that crash and performing a traffic analysis of the area, though that review was tied to the earlier fatal collision rather than Thursday's crash.
A Petition Grows Amid Safety Concerns
Frustration over the corridor has also taken the form of organized pressure on local officials. A petition called Make LaVista Safer had grown to 636 supporters as of mid-September, per the same Atlanta News First report, as neighbors pushed DeKalb County to reconsider the design of the intersection.
It remains unclear what caused Thursday's sedan to cross into oncoming traffic, and police have not said whether citations or charges are expected to result from the investigation. DeKalb County police said only that the investigation is ongoing as they continue to piece together what happened on LaVista Road.
