A 55-year-old Perkins woman is dead after her westbound car and an eastbound vehicle both swerved north and collided along State Highway 33 east of Range Road on Saturday morning, according to Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Lisa Dunbar died in the collision, while the driver of the other vehicle, a man from Tulsa, was injured.
Troopers Detail How the Two Vehicles Met Near the Roadway's Edge
The crash unfolded in Payne County when Dunbar's westbound vehicle and the Tulsa driver's eastbound vehicle both swerved north before colliding near the northern edge of the highway, according to News 9. Cedar News reported Dunbar's death and that her next of kin had been notified, according to Cedar News.
Troopers have not said what prompted both drivers to swerve in the same direction moments before impact. The cause remains under investigation, per the same report from Cedar News.
A Highway With a Troubled Safety Record
Dunbar's death adds to a string of serious crashes on this stretch of State Highway 33. A head-on collision near Perkins injured a Mannford woman on May 28, as the Guthrie News Page reported. Further back, a fatal two-vehicle wreck in October 2014 killed two local junior high school teachers roughly six miles west of Perkins, underscoring that safety concerns along this Payne County corridor are not new.
The danger has not been confined to Payne County. Two people died when a Jeep collided with a water truck on Highway 33 in Guthrie, as Hoodline previously reported. Just days before Dunbar's crash, a pedestrian was struck by a semi-truck near the Highway 33 and I-35 junction in Logan County, and earlier this month an 89-year-old Mannford man died in a left-turn crash with a teen driver on the same highway in Creek County.
A $24 Million Widening Project Approved
In May 2023, the Oklahoma Transportation Commission approved a $24 million project to widen State Highway 33 between Perkins and Guthrie from two lanes to four, aiming to improve safety, sight distance and visibility along the rural stretch, according to the Guthrie News Page. The highway carries an average of roughly 6,900 vehicles a day, according to Hoodline.
Statewide, Oklahoma's overall traffic fatalities actually declined in the most recent year on record, dropping 9.3% to 645 deaths in 2024 from 711 in 2023, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data analyzed by the Addison Law Firm. But that broader improvement came alongside a troubling exception: alcohol-impaired driving deaths in Oklahoma rose from 177 in 2023 to 225 in 2024, the firm's analysis found.
No cause has been released for why both vehicles in Saturday's crash swerved into the same stretch of pavement, and the investigation remains with Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
