Answers sought after 2 Stafford student deaths in 2 years on narrow county roads

STAFFORD — Students called Stafford’s antiquated two-lane roads dangerous as they remembered their friend, a 17-year-old girl who died behind the wheel of her car on her birthday.

Helen Wang, Colonial Forge High School student, was hit and killed after a picnic with her friends on her 17th birthday on May 16. She was leaving the Abel Lake Boat Ramp, where she met her friends for an afternoon at the reservoir.

While attempting to pull onto the narrow two-lane Kellogg Mill Road, she unable to see past the overgrown vegetation that blocked her view of oncoming traffic, said students who saw the accident. The truck ultimately t-boned Wang’s car as she was attempting to turn onto Kellogg Mill Road from the Abel Lake boat ramp.

A 17-year-old male who was also in the car with Wang and suffered a broken arm and was taken to a local hospital and was later released.

Following  Wang’s death, the Abel Lake boat ramp was ordered closed by the Stafford Board of Supervisors.

Clad in yellow, a group of Colonial Forge students, Wang’s friends, spoke to Supervisors about the accident and the treacherous conditions of county back roads at a meeting May 21.

“Our back roads are horrible,” student Alexis Urman said. “Our back roads are just god awful.”

Jeff Adams lives on Kellogg Mill Road and proposed his own solution to the Board of Supervisors about clearing the vegetation. He attested to the car accidents and fatalities he’s seen over the past 10 years.

“I know people who will come out with chainsaws and clear the vegetation tomorrow. It won’t cost the county a single cent.”

The brush that had blocked the view was cleared by a Virginia Department of Transportation on Wednesday afternoon. The county plans to pave the entrance at the Abel Lake boating ramp which is currently a gravel parking lot.

Adams said that when he is leaving the  Abel Lake boating ramp parking lot, he “opens the window [of his car], turns down the radio all the way, and listens to see if there’s oncoming traffic” due to the lack of visibility.

Just last year, Kyle Morgan, a Mountain View High School student, was killed in a head-on collision on Poplar Road in Stafford County. He was the passenger in 2005 Hyundai Accent that hit a pothole and swerved into the oncoming lane and struck a 2003 Chevy Silverado.

Wang’s death on May 16 comes after a county fire truck crashed on a narrow, winding portion of Garrisonville Road on May on May 12. After voting to hike property the last two years in a row, county officials decided to give  ‘no new money to fix this portion of Garrisonville Road, identified in a county study as one of the worst stretches of roadway in the county.

This portion of Garrisonville Road, between Joshua Road and Arrowhead Drive, ranks in the top 10 of most dangerous streets with under 1,700 cars per day.

That was the finding from a year-long, internal county study that wrapped up in January which took an in-depth look at county streets, ranking them from best to worst. The study looked at crash rates, the amount of traffic, and current infrastructure conditions, like pavement and shoulder width.

“The amount of traffic on I-95 backs up our back roads which makes it more unsafe for students to go or come home from school,” Garrisonville Supervisor Mark Dudenhefer said. “We need to be much more aggressive than we are. We are failing these kids.”

Dudenhefer’s 17-year-old daughter, Emily, was killed in 2004 after her car, which was driven by her friend, swerved off of Mountain View Road and struck a tree. She too was a Colonial Forge student.

The Board of Supervisors will vote on the annual Capital Improvement Plan in June. It was slated to vote on the plan Tuesday but the discussion of the fatal crash preempted the vote. The capital improvement project list includes $224 million of improvements that include a newly rebuilt courthouse, improvements to existing schools, and a new $124 million high school. The list fails to include any major road improvements to be funded by the county, which are currently funded only by the state.

“We shouldn’t have to choose between good schools or safe roads,” community advocate Michelle Goshorn wrote on Facebook.

In 1988, when its population was just less than half of what it is today, Prince William County grew tired of waiting for the state to approve a $110 million road construction of Prince William Parkway. The state only allocated $8 million to the state per year in 1988. The Prince William Board of Supervisors came up with a radical idea at the time: funding the roads themselves.

Back then, VDOT was primarily responsible for building and maintaining virtually every stop sign, speed bump, and freeway.

The county held a referendum where voters approved of the road bond that was used to fund the construction of Prince William Parkway. Officials in that county, which has a population twice the size of Stafford, are considering placing a $600 million parks and transportation bond on the November ballot.

A total of $400 million of it would be used to widen roads, build new interchanges, and add new pedestrian and safety improvements.

Earlier this year, Stafford officials, already in debt, decided not to do the same citing fears that borrowing more cash to fix roads would negatively affect the county’s bond ratings.