Car crashes on 220, same spot where tanker crashed

By Candice Nelson
WSLS10 Reporter
Published: July 20, 2008

A blue Honda sat on its roof in the middle of Route 220 in Roanoke.

“I was driving down the road and the next thing that happened was I was flipping over,” said Tracy Clark.

Clark is safe now but sat on a guardrail in the northbound lane making a couple of phone calls. It was the new guardrail, still shiny, put up just one week after last Saturday’s fiery and fatal crash involving a tanker truck. And Clark’s accident was in the same curve as the tanker’s crash.

“Where I over-controlled, I hit the guardrail, and the guardrail caused me to flip over,” she said.

Roanoke City Police say both drivers were fine and did not need to go to the hospital. Clark knows she’s lucky. The numbers show how dangerous this road can be.

In 2007, both northbound and southbound lanes, between Elm Avenue and Franklin Road, had 30 crashes. So far in 2008, police say there were 14 crashes, excluding Clark’s accident.

Clark said she wasn’t going too fast.

“If I was going anything, I was going 60 miles per hour.” She said it would be a good idea to lower the speed limit, which is 55 mph. She was the only person in the car and is relieved.
   
“I’m just glad I left my little boy at home because he would have been with me and it would have been a lot worse,” she said.

Roanoke City Police say Clark was charged with failure to maintain control of her vehicle. Police say Clark and the driver of the Chevrolet Cavalier were the only two people involved.