Lee County moves to make Winifred Road’s 45 mph limit official

LEESBURG — Lee County commissioners on Tuesday started the process of making 45 mph the official speed limit on Winifred Road, after a study found that most drivers on the residential road already travel faster than that.

The road is posted at 45 mph. But County Manager Scott Addison told the board that the road’s current approved speed limit is 55 mph and that the study was needed to “officially set the speed limit” so it can be enforced.

“The study does confirm that a 45-mile-an-hour speed limit on that road is acceptable and recommended,” Addison said.

The change will take several steps. The county must apply to the Georgia Department of Transportation for approval. Once GDOT signs off, the county must amend its ordinance, which requires public advertisement and review by the Lee County Planning Commission before the board adopts it. The new limit can be enforced only after a waiting period, Addison said.

Commissioners voted Tuesday to begin that process. 

The county hired Foresite Group of Peachtree Corners to study the two-lane road, which runs about 3.5 miles from Old Dawson Road, just inside Dougherty County, north to U.S. Highway 82.

Counters placed on the road Sept. 15, a school day, found that on all four sections studied, at least 40% of vehicles traveled faster than 45 mph. The 85th-percentile speed, the speed that 85% of drivers stay at or below, ranged from 52 to 60 mph.

The fastest stretch ran between Hickory Grove Road and Cookville Road. There, 88% of drivers topped 45 mph, and 36% went faster than 55. The median speed was 53 mph.

The busiest stretch, between Wadsworth Avenue and Hickory Grove Road, carried 1,837 vehicles in a day and has 69 driveways in 1.4 miles.

The study counted 24 crashes on Winifred Road from 2021 through 2025, injuring 14 people. One crash caused a serious injury. Twenty of the 24 crashes involved an intersection or driveway, and six happened at the Hickory Grove Road intersection, four of them because a driver failed to yield. Deer or other animals were involved in four.

The report blames the speeds largely on the road itself. Winifred Road is long and straight with wide, open shoulders, which makes drivers comfortable going faster than is safe, the study found.

It also points to a Georgia law that bars county and city officers from writing speeding tickets based on radar or laser unless a driver is going more than 10 mph over the limit. The rule does not apply to the Georgia State Patrol. Drivers who know about the rule can push local speeds higher, the report said.

Under older federal guidance, speeds that high could have supported raising the limit, the study noted. But current federal rules let engineers weigh a road’s surroundings, and Foresite concluded that Winifred Road’s homes, driveways and growing development support keeping it at 45. Much of the surrounding farmland already has been rezoned for homes, the report said.

To bring speeds down, the study recommends lower-cost steps first: striping lanes to 10 feet wide, adding centerline rumble strips and reflective markers, planting low shrubs along the road edge, painting medians and increasing law enforcement. Longer-term, it suggests roundabouts at Hickory Grove Road and Cookville Road and raised, landscaped medians. Speed bumps were ruled out.

Commissioners did not discuss the cost of those measures Tuesday.

The Board of Commissioners next meets at 6 p.m. Dec. 8 at the T. Page Tharp Governmental Building in Leesburg.