While the intersection of State Route 33 and Deen Still Road may seem like a small country location, each week nearly 30,000 vehicles drive through.
Of those vehicles, a third, or about 10,000 are very large trucks. The intersection has a history of very bad crashes according to F.D.O.T Spokesperson Robin Stublen.
"The side street there, Deen Still... people there have a tendency not to yield to the right of way,” Stublen said. “They pull out inside of traffic and as you can imagine there are quite a few sever accidents and there have been several fatalities at that particular location."
After researching similar intersections in other parts of the country and ways State Departments of Transportation have lowered the number of crashes, F.D.O.T plans to remove the existing intersection and replace it with a roundabout.
"We've designed these roundabouts to accommodate large trucks. We have a concrete truck apron that's on the inside that accounts for the turning radius of the large vehicles,” Stublen said.
Construction doesn't begin until December of next year. Total cost of the project is estimated at $2.2 million.
A second roundabout is planned for the intersection of U.S. 17 and Hunt Brothers Road in the county.
Once installed, if safety results at State Route 33 and Deen Still Road match similar designs nationwide, drivers may expect to see more of these circles in the future.