State looked at expanding road where deadly school bus crash occurred

The Florida Department of Transportation has been studying a road expansion project on the road where re a deadly school crash injured 30 people and killed two people in Polk County, according to department records.Lucerne Park Road is currently two lanes, but the state has proposed turning the eight mile stretch from Martin Luther King Boulevard to State Road 17 into four lanes where there are two lanes of traffic on both sides with a median to relieve congestion after population growth in the areas and to enhance safety. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd (R) said the road expansion project could have led to fewer injuries or casualties.“Two people lost their lives, but a four-lane divided highway would have certainly made the difference,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday. According to a Florida Department of Transportation Traffic analysis report, there were 829 crashes that occurred over a six-year period from 2014 to 2019. The state’s data show that about 33% of those crashes