By Ariel Hart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/04/07
It was the worst accident at the I-75 ramp at Northside Drive. But it wasn't the first.

At least 82 other drivers have crashed at a ramp on an overpass from which a bus fell Friday morning, killing four college baseball players, the bus driver and his wife.

Forty-eight of the wrecks happened at the top of the ramp, where it runs into Northside Drive, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of nine years of Georgia Department of Transportation data. Two people died in the previous crashes. DOT could not say how the number of wrecks at the Northside Drive ramp compared to other ramps.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators were at the bus crash site Saturday. They also examined the bus, being stored at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, in search of clues.

One thing is clear, said NTSB's Kitty Higgins: "The driver did not intend to exit on Northside Drive."

The federal agency plans to examine the ramp's configuration and the signs leading up to it.