Tennessee State Route 96 near Buffalo Valley is too dangerous for trucks. If traffic on Interstate 40 slows down enough (e.g. due to accidents), cars and trucks both often take alternate routes. However, long vehicles cannot safely turn left off of Nashville Highway onto Medley Amonette Road, or vice versa to turn right, due to the sharp turn. When this happens, semi-trucks get stuck, backing up traffic on state highways too and forcing them onto county roads like Old Baxter Road, Stanton Road and Rock Springs Road. This could be even worse given that although TDOT tries to send traffic onto Main Street/Old Baxter Road during incidents, the turn left onto Main Street is easy to miss, and Mayor Danny Holmes stated that many residents complain about the traffic going through downtown.

Additionally, State Route 141 between Long Branch Road and the DeKalb/Smith County line is slowly falling into the Caney Fork River. This is an inevitable natural process as rivers deposit sediment on the inside of river bends and erode the bluffs on the outside. This is a video explaining, with real photos, how rivers erode. It's a waste of money for TDOT to keep fighting against nature to save S.R. 141 on its current route.

It doesn't have to be this way. TDOT could move S.R. 24 (which has a hidden concurrency with U.S. Route 70N) south onto the existing S.R. 96 plus Stanton Road and parts of Indian Creek Road and Hopewell Road if it's too expensive to redesign the western S.R. 96/U.S. 70N intersection with the terrain, especially given that there's already a road not too curvy for trucks to make that could be widened to state highway standards instead of built from scratch. Furthermore, TDOT can close the problematic part of S.R. 141 and reroute the highway north onto Bettys Bend Road, Club Springs Road and St Mary's Road, either permanently or while they look for a long-term solution. Such solutions could be an interchange with Interstate 40 where it crosses Bettys Bend Road, a bridge across the Caney Fork River connecting Moss Bend Road to S.R. 96 or a bridge connecting Love Valley Road to the existing S.R. 141. In all three cases, once again, at least most of the road is there; only the bridge or highway ramps would need to be built from scratch, with most of the existing roads just being widened to state highway standards for collector roads.

Dear Tennessee Department of Transportation: please move State Route 24 to go south through Buffalo Valley, and State Route 141 between Lancaster and Edgar Evins State Park, to prevent trucks from getting stuck trying to turn to continue on S.R. 96 and stop wasting money fighting nature along the Caney Fork River! There are already roads that can accommodate simply moving those state highways away from the problem areas if you simply widen substandard roads, maybe adding a few highway ramps or a bridge at most; you don't have to build any new roads from scratch to find a solution to these problems. The sooner you act, the fewer additional trucks will get stuck and more smoothly disrupted interstate traffic will flow, and the less money will be wasted trying to fight the powerful Caney Fork River. Please. Pretty please. We have an infrastructure crisis, and sometimes the solution is simpler than having to build a brand new road even if fixing the old one isn't worthwhile.

EDIT: In early June of 2024, the town of Baxter also lowered the speed limit of Main Street to fifteen miles per hour on a half-mile stretch downtown and put up Speed Bump Ahead signs indicating that they planned to put up speed bumps. Speed bumps can snap a semi-truck in half if they don't slow way down, so truck traffic will most likely need to be rerouted onto either First Avenue South in Baxter or Nashville Highway and Stanton Road west of it to remain safe. They took the signs down within a few days, so it seems to have been temporary for an event. Still, it may be best to consider rerouting traffic in case an incident were to happen during such an event in downtown Baxter for the safety of both pedestrians and truckers.

EDIT 2: In 2025, it came to light that Mayor of Baxter Danny Holmes said many residents are complaining about traffic on Main Street during interstate incidents. This further highlights the need to establish a better detour route, even if it requires some degree of physical construction.

P.S.: I also created a Google My Map to give a better idea of what I'm talking about. https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1E7iKYzGDLqTcs60t_MgUsxGnG0jbKPA&usp=sharing