UNITED STATES - A deadly depression, Pothole causes death, injuries

HEFLIN, Ala (AP):

His wife riding beside him with their two children in safety seats in the back, John Fisher drove home towards South Carolina along a stretch of Interstate 20 covered with ruts, bumps and crumbling concrete.

Just ahead of the family, Crystal Marie Dick was heading to the other side of the Georgia line to give a friend a ride.

The pothole in front of her 1995 Toyota Camry had been fixed at least once already, and now the repair was breaking down too. A pocket of jagged, brittle bits of concrete covered nearly half the right lane, the slow lane.

Her Camry hit the hole, kicking a chunk into the air as the Fishers' green Ford pickup hurtled forward at 70mph.

The glass directly in front of Fisher's wife exploded.

No one knows exactly how big the fragment was, but it blew a hole the size of a football through the windshield. It struck Jo Maureen Fisher in the head, sailed between her preschoolers, hit the rear window and shattered it too, flying out of the truck's cab, never to be found.

Wounded in the most random of ways, John Fisher's 33-year-old wife died the next day. Today, he is a single dad trying to balance work with childcare and all the things she used to do.

trying to cope

Back in Alabama, Dick is trying to go on with life too. It's not easy when you're a young mother and your only transportation is that old blue Camry, the one that still carries awful memories and a busted rear end from hitting a pothole at highway speed.

Dick knows she wasn't at fault. Troopers decided no one was. Yet, she still is haunted by the accident.

Using federal studies, the Washington-based transportation safety advocacy group TRIP estimates the United States could save 145 lives over a decade for every $100 million spent on a variety of road safety improvements and maintenance.

The cost is high. So is the price of letting just one pothole turn into a killer.

Jo Maureen Cavanaugh and John Fisher went on their first date in January 2000, the year after she graduated from Elon University in North Carolina. They ate at an Applebee's and were engaged a few months later.

A cousin of hers was getting married in New Orleans last March, so the family packed up their Ford F-150 for the 13-hour drive across five states. The ceremony finished, they headed back towards Goose Creek, near Charleston.

There are a few different ways to drive from New Orleans to Charleston. The Fishers chose I-20, which crosses Alabama from Mississippi before leading into Georgia and South Carolina.

On the morning of March 15, the family drove eastward out of Birmingham into construction zones that have slowed traffic for years. They crossed Lake Logan Martin, passed the Talladega Superspeedway and went through Oxford, the last city of any size before the Georgia line.

pits and patches

Only a few miles before the interstate smooths out in Georgia, John Fisher came upon a section so riddled with pits and patches that drivers turn up the radio to drown out the roar of the road.

The 210 milepost was just ahead. More than 33,000 vehicles pass it daily on average.

Dick, who had asked her boyfriend to watch her four sons while she made the 40-minute drive to Carrollton, Ga, to pick up her friend, took the entrance ramp to I-20 east and found herself in the right-hand lane, behind a slow truck.

It's not clear how long the Fisher family was behind her, or how far back they were.

Dick checked her rear-view mirror and swivelled her head to check the Camry's blind spot, then began easing into the lane on her left.

"Just when I went to pull out it went 'boom!'" Dick said. "I didn't know if my motor had fallen out or what."

An investigation by Alabama state troopers determined Dick's right rear wheel struck the pothole. She said she never had a chance to avoid the rocky depression, and couldn't have stopped in time either. Troopers didn't issue any tickets.

Shocked by what sounded like a cannon going off behind her, Dick looked in her mirrors and saw Fisher's green pickup swerving all over. She also knew right away that something was seriously wrong with her car and pulled to the right into the emergency lane. Fisher pulled in right behind her, panicked.

Dick's right rear tyre was flat, and the rim of the wheel was badly bent from hitting the pothole. Confused at first, Dick saw the huge hole in Fisher's windshield, directly in front of the passenger seat where his wife was sitting.

Dick realised something terrible had happened and dialled 911.

Jo Maureen Fisher was bleeding. Her seven-month-old daughter Ella was covered with glass from the blown-out windshield and four-year-old Thomas was asking about his mother, but neither was injured. Amazingly, the concrete missile passed directly between them and out the truck's back window without touching either child.

A trooper arrived, and an ambulance. With no one else to help, Dick said, John Fisher asked her to go to the hospital with him to watch the kids, but troopers wouldn't let her because she had to give a statement. Jo Maureen Fisher was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Birmingham, where she died the next day.

Dick said she and Fisher spoke by phone after Jo Maureen died. He told her about the funeral arrangements for his wife, but Dick didn't have anyone to watch her kids, and she lacked money for the trip to South Carolina.

Troopers determined both Fisher and Dick were driving the speed limit, and neither was at fault. The condition of the road contributed to the accident, the official report said.