SECTION 1: PURPOSE OF THIS PETITION
We urge NMDOT and the Office of the Governor to take immediate action to address life-threatening conditions on U.S. Highway 180 between Reserve, Glenwood, and Silver City. This petition is submitted with extraordinary urgency: a third fatal crash occurred already this year on this same road on the evening of August 19, 2026, the day this petition was being written.

This corridor lacks basic safety infrastructure; including guardrails, adequate signage, stabilized shoulders, and roadside barriers—along steep canyon sections. Severe unevenness between the paved travel lanes and the unpaved roadside creates a severe hazard where vehicle tires drop off, forcing panic-induced overcorrection and loss of vehicle control. People are dying. Formal governmental action is required immediately.  

SECTION 2: THE DANGER ZONE — GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE
The critical segment runs along U.S. Highway 180 between Reserve and Glenwood and extending toward Silver City, bounded by the following GPS coordinates:

●      Northern endpoint: 33°37'7.79"N, 108°53'37.67"W 

●      Southern endpoint: 33°29'21.26"N, 108°55'36.76"W 

This mountainous corridor features narrow lanes, sharp curves, and sheer canyon drop-offs with little to no guardrail protection. U.S. 180 is a primary arterial road for this region, not a low-traffic backway.

SECTION 3: RECENT FATALITIES AND INCIDENTS
The following 2026 fatal incidents are submitted for the official record:

●      On the evening of August 19, 2026 — the day before this petition is submitted — a third fatal crash occurred between mile markers 34 and 35 on the same unguarded corridor. The crash involved an adult and several children. Fatalities have been confirmed; at least two victims were airlifted. The full toll was not yet known at time of writing.

●      On March 8, 2026, near mile marker 33, a vehicle plunged approximately 300 feet into a canyon. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene. Two passengers, ages 15 and 16, were airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso. 

●      At the end of February 2026, a man and a woman went off the edge of the road.  The man was killed and the woman was critically injured.

Three crashes with confirmed fatalities in fewer than six months, on the same unguarded stretch of road, is not coincidence. It is a preventable pattern that demands accountability.

SECTION 4: THE CASE FOR GUARDRAILS AND SAFETY FEATURES
●      FHWA standards require guardrail installation where canyon edges or embankment slopes exceed safe thresholds. This corridor clearly meets that standard.

●      A vehicle striking a guardrail is far more likely to produce a survivable outcome than a vehicle plunging 300 feet into a canyon. This is proven, established engineering fact.

●      The absence of guardrails or concrete surface-mounted barriers here is not a maintenance gap — it is an infrastructure failure that has already cost lives.

●     Additional needed improvements: advance warning signage, speed enforcement, reflective curve delineators, and emergency pull-off areas.

●     The absence of flush, stabilized highway shoulders is an infrastructure failure that has already cost lives [1]. Implementing system-wide solutions, such as paving the shoulder flush is a proven, established engineering fact to safely eliminate overcorrection crashes.

SECTION 5: SPECIFIC REQUESTS
We formally request the following actions:

1.     Conduct an immediate Road Safety Audit (RSA) of U.S. Highway 180 between coordinates 33°37'7.79"N, 108°53'37.67"W and 33°29'21.26"N, 108°55'36.76"W.

2.     Prioritize installation of W-beam or cable guardrails or concrete surface-mounted barriers along all canyon-adjacent sections, with urgent focus on mile markers 33–35 where multiple fatalities have occurred.

3.     Implement interim safety measures immediately — warning signage, rumble strips, reflective curve delineators, and speed enforcement — while permanent infrastructure is installed.

4.     Eliminate pavement drop-offs along the segment by regrading shoulder material flush with the travel lanes or retrofitting the asphalt with a sloped edge to safely mitigate tire drop-off and driver overcorrection.

5.     Provide a formal written response within 30 days including a timeline for action and description of interim measures.

6.     Include this corridor in the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) for expedited funding and construction.

7.     Hold a public community meeting in Reserve, New Mexico to allow residents to testify and engage directly with NMDOT officials.

SECTION 6: COMMUNITY IMPACT
This is the road our children take to school, our families use to reach medical care and grocery stores, and our neighbors depend on daily. The population here is small — every death is personal, every crash is communal grief. We are not asking for luxury infrastructure. We are asking for the same baseline safety every American driver deserves, regardless of zip code.

SECTION 7: CLOSING STATEMENT
As this petition was written, a third fatal crash was unfolding on this same unguarded road. We are not warning you that lives may be lost — we are telling you lives were lost this week. We stand ready to cooperate with NMDOT and welcome any community engagement process, but the time for unanswered requests and deferred budgets has passed.

Please do not allow another death to occur before action is taken.