SC lacks money to fix unsafe road where 20-year-old died

Vance Ferrigno was driving home from work Nov. 10, 2015, when he saw a car overturned in the median of U.S. 25 in northern Greenville County.

The crushed car, flipped over in the ditch, was the same turquoise green as the his son Anthony’s vehicle.

“No, please Lord. No, please Lord,” Vance Ferrigno remembers thinking.

Anthony Ferrigno died on a stretch of U.S. 25 that S.C. Transportation Department officials said Thursday needs safety improvements, including new pavement.

But it is unclear when the road will be repaved, estimated to cost about $6 million. The project does not rank high enough on the state’s priority lists to qualify for the limited dollars that the roads agency has to spend.

“This is an example of these safety needs that we have all across our state,” said roads agency chief Christy Hall.

Safety improvements needed

The car that Anthony Ferrigno, 20, was driving ran off the road and hit a concrete culvert, causing it to flip into the ditch.

Highway Patrol officers investigated. They did not think speeding was a factor, Vance Ferrigno said.

Vance Ferrigno also checked his son’s cellphone phone records, trying to determine if Anthony had been distracted when he crashed. Anthony had not used his phone in more than an hour before the crash.

A simple guard rail might have saved his son’s life, Vance Ferrigno said Thursday.

The nine-mile stretch of U.S. 25, from Hawkins Road to the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway, has poor pavement, missing or faded road markings, missing or outdated signs, no paved shoulders and no rumble strips to warn drivers they are close to the edge of the road.

The state Transportation Department will be able to make some short-term, low-cost improvements — such as upgrading signs — to the road, Hall said.

But, she added, “The bigger issue of addressing the pavement condition, we’ll have to work on that as funding becomes available.”

Transportation Department commissioner Woody Willard, who represents the Greenville area, said the road-repair agency likely will provide proposals to the Legislature in January to show lawmakers that if they give the agency more money, significant primary roads – like U.S. 25 – can be improved.

“If funding is not made available, then you’re going to start to see more and more failures in certain areas, not only in our bridges but in some of our road networks,” Willard said.

Recently, for example, a Greenville bridge had to be closed for emergency repairs.

“If we had been able to spend the money to maintain our bridges like we should have, we wouldn’t be having all of these emergency expenditures,” Willard said.

‘How many people have to die?’

Rebecca Cooper, a Travelers Rest City Council member, is a member of the committee that requested the Transportation Department look at the condition of U.S. 25. Cooper said her committee plans to try to get money from local governments, too, to help improve U.S. 25.

The road, which has two lanes in each direction, does not have left-turn lanes, forcing traffic in the fast lane to come to a halt for drivers making left turns. Drivers hope whoever is behind them is paying attention, Cooper said.

It also has been years since the road was paved, Cooper added. “It has been patched, and patched, and patched, and patched again.”

U.S. 25 is safer in North Carolina, where it has a wider median and cable-barrier systems, said Vance Ferrigno. Ferrigno, who has been driving the highway for 10 years, said he never thought much about the S.C. road’s lack of safety features before his son’s crash.

Now, he does. “How many people have to die to make a change in the road?”

This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 8:39 AM with the headline "SC lacks money to fix unsafe road where 20-year-old died."