MACON, Ga. — The road conditions on I-75 South are still troubling people.
In February, we spoke to a driver saying the potholes and gaps on 1-75 heading south from Sardis Church Road to Byron were dangerous.
The Georgia Department of Transportation said they were working to fix it and had already started rehabbing 10 miles of the highway between Sardis Church Road to Housers Mill Road. One man who says the road is still bumpy and it's driving him crazy.
“My name is Bryan Jones and the road between Highway 96 and Sardis Church Road is driving me crazy,” he said.
Jones says he knows roads.
“Because I'm a cross-country truck driver,” he laughed.
He’s driven everywhere except Vermont, but says the road between Sardis Church and the Byron exit is just bad infrastructure.
“Is the worst on the whole stretch of interstate,” Jones said.
The state said their rehab project would take each piece of concrete, grind it up and pave it smooth again.
“There's different bumps– see how you feel that it's not level? If they've redone all this concrete, why are there all these bumps in the road like that,” he said.
Jones says aside from the concrete that's been redone, there are still parts of the road neglected.
“Now we're getting on I-75 south,” he explained. That’s where the trouble starts.
He says a quarter mile from the Sardis Church exit, the road is ripped up.
“Here's the bump. See it rocking the car back and forth? Just imagine 75,000 pounds hitting that bump."
Jones says trucks can feel uneven roads more than regular cars.
“If I didn’t have my seatbelt on, it would throw me out of my seat,” he said.
Jones says this is just dangerous.
“You've got less experienced drivers, people from out of state. They hit a bump, you know it don’t take but one car to mess up and it has a big chain reaction,” he said.
The state responded in a statement saying the highway is still an active construction zone. They say they’re watching the project closely and taking precautions like installing caution signs.
They ask that drivers please be patient while they continue to fix the concrete.
The Department of Transportation says that the project is slated to finish at the end of this year. Until then, they ask drivers to be careful while driving past work zones.
Here is their full statement:
“This is area is within an active construction zone. The Area is monitoring this project closely and taking the necessary precaution to ensure motorists are safely directed through the construction zone. All advance warning signs are installed and maintained accordingly. The area is having its concrete slabs rehabbed which includes the milling, grinding and then paving of the new ones on this portion of I-75. The project is slated to be completed at the end of this year. We ask the motorists to be patient and to drive through the area with caution as with all our work zones around the state.”