Caution light to be installed at deadly intersection

WING, ALA. — Seven months after the death of three Okaloosa County sisters, Covington County Commissioners approved an agreement with the Alabama Department of Transportation to install a caution light at the intersection of Alabama Highway 137 and Covington County Road 4, the site of the fatal wreck. 

Tuesday evening, June 14, 2011, Dianne Piore was driving her granddaughters, 8-year-old twins Danielle and Jenelle Pippins, and their sister, Savannah, 11, home to Baker after a week of horseback riding with their grandmother at her second home near Andalusia, Ala. 

Piore was driving south on Alabama 137 when two girls from Birmingham, Ala., traveling east on Covington County Road 4, ran a stop sign and t-boned the Piore car in the small community of Wing, Ala.

The impact killed the three Pippins girls instantly. Piore was flown by hospital to Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, where she was treated for critical injuries and later released.

The girls’ mother and stepfather, Jenny and Jim Higdon, and their father, Eric Pippins, live in Crestview.

Later that month, Wing residents held a community input meeting to ask ALDOT to install a caution light. A subsequent DOT study said the installation of warning signs, rumble stripes and a new median and stop sign – not a light – were needed.

Local residents, unsatisfied with ALDOT’s decision, began a petition asking for help from local government officials.

The move worked, said Jay Spicer, Wing Volunteer Fire Department assistant chief. Spicer was one of many emergency personnel that responded to the June accident. He said then that he thought a traffic light at the intersection could have prevented the deadly accident.

“Everyone here is glad to hear the light’s going up,” Spicer said. “We’re hoping it may save some lives in the future. It’ll let people who aren’t from here know there’s an intersection up ahead.”

Spicer has been with the fire department for more than 20 years and said he has responded to eight fatalities at the intersection during that time.

"It is a wide intersection and if you missed the 'Stop Ahead' sign and come up on the intersection you just don't have enough time to come to a complete stop, even if you are going 45 miles per hour — which is the limit through there. You just can't come to a complete stop," Spicer said. "And you sure can't if you are traveling back roads at a higher speed and aren't familiar with the intersection in the road."

Residents, unsatisfied by the DOT decision, began a petition to ask for the light at the intersection.

Covington County will share half of the $28,000 cost to install the caution light, with the state providing the other half.

“If it could stop one life from being lost, it would be worth that little bit of cost,” Spicer said. “That place has needed a light for years and I am glad to know it is coming.”