Dump truck hitting sign and blocking I-75 for hours not unique situation

ATLANTA — Thousands of Atlanta area drivers got stuck in traffic for hours during Wednesday’s rush hour after a dump truck hit a steel post and knocked over a big sign across I-75 North.

Thursday afternoon, traffic was moving smoothly.

Wednesday afternoon and into the evening saw the northbound lanes blocked near Highway 5 in Marietta.

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It happened around 5 p.m.

Marietta police told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims a dump truck heading south on I-75, and in the far left lane, hit the sign’s steel support structure.

“When that dump truck swerved toward the sign, it was that inertia that kept that momentum going,” Officer Chuck McPhilamy, from the Marietta Police Department, said. “That force, that caused the sign to cripple.”

McPhilamy told Channel 2 Action News that the driver, 34-year-old Esmaela Beshir, was charged with driving in a lane where commercial vehicles aren’t allowed.

“There’s no sign that there’s any kind of damage to the sign itself originally,” McPhilamy said. “It had been a number of years. There’s nothing to indicate there were any problems with it.”

Now, Channel 2 Action News is learning this isn’t the first time an overhead sign has fallen on a freeway, causing traffic delays.

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Similar incidents happened on metro area interstates in April 2021, like when a large commercial truck hit a sign along I-85 in South Fulton County, causing it to hang over the highway.

That same week, a crash involving a truck caused a sign to collapse onto I-285 in DeKalb County, blocking lanes for hours.

Responding to requests for comment by Channel 2 Action News, Georgia Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Higley said Wednesday’s crash was an extraordinary circumstance.

“Our transportation infrastructure is engineered and built to withstand expected conditions and remain in place for years, so to be very clear, yes, they are structurally sound,” Higley said.

Higley said the truck weighed more than 30,000 pounds, and hit the infrastructure for the sign “at just the wrong location,” while traveling at highway speeds.

For the incident Wednesday night, it’s still unclear exactly what caused the dump truck to hit the sign in the first place.

The Georgia Motor Carrier Compliance Division will look into the incident to see if there was anything defective about the truck, or if the driver could face more charges.

No one was hurt in the accident Wednesday evening.

However, some drivers were frustrated after being stuck in traffic for hours.

“It was horrible. I have never had anything like that,” driver Syndle Johnson told Channel 2′s Tom Regan.

She was trapped in what she called a “pavement prison” for three hours. Johnson told Regan that she took beach chairs out of her car to pass the time, with other drivers making the best of the lost hours while waiting on the highway.

“There was a guy that was in front of me, that was waxing his jeep, there was a woman who had a newborn. We were worried about our car overheating and I was low on gas,” Johnson said.

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