BULLITT COUNTY, Ky. (WDRB) — Safety changes could be coming to Kentucky Highway 44 in Bullitt County following several serious crashes in just the last few months.
Highway 44 runs about 20 miles across Bullitt County. Data from Kentucky State Police shows there were 514 wrecks last year on the road, causing 119 injuries and two deaths. As of March 2, when WDRB News reported on the most recent fatal crash, there'd been 83 crashes and 26 injuries. In the 35 days since, there've been another 59.
The Bullitt County Fiscal Court recently voted to ask the state to lower the speed limit from 55 to 45 on the stretch from Sunview Lane to the Shepherdsville city limits. More than 11,000 cars and trucks drive that stretch in Bullitt County every day, according to the most recent KYTC traffic count from 2024.
Last month, investigators said a juvenile driving a truck was heading west on KY 44, near Mt. Washington. For unknown reasons, the passenger-side tires dropped off the right side of the roadway onto a steep shoulder and the driver overcorrected. The truck then crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed head-on into an SUV.
Sarah Weisman, 27, crashed into a small embankment, and the car overturned onto its roof. Police said Weisman died at the scene. The juvenile driver of the truck wasn't injured.
Hours after a WDRB story on the crash aired March 2, state crews were on the scene, filling some of the shoulder and patching other areas.
A crash this weekend on KY 44 in Bullitt County that killed a 27-year-old man highlighted safety concerns local drivers have voiced for years. March 2, 2026. (WDRB Photo)
In the stretch between Douglas Lane and Foster Lane where that crash happened, there were 24 wrecks in 2025 alone. None of those numbers are shocking to Scott Sztanya, who lives along Highway 44.
The fatal crash that killed Weisman ended in his yard. "I've had more than my fair share of accidents in my yard but since the last 12 months, I've had 12 accidents. Nine of them were reportable."
"The amount of traffic that travels this road — I've lived here 25 years — it's tripled maybe quadrupled," Sztanya said Tuesday.
A KYTC spokesperson said last month that safety is its top priority and it's reviewing the data to assess conditions on the roadway. Now, the county is taking matters into its own hands, wanting the state to lower the speed limit.
"That is the idea for now," Bullitt County Judge Executive Jerry Summers said Tuesday. "That's the best we can do with what we have to work with right now."
Summer said both Shepherdsville police and the county sheriff's office will enforce the speed limit if the state approves the change. Sztanya said he and his neighbors would welcome the change but said it will ultimately take widening the road to protect the more than 11,000 people driving the busy road each day.
"Unless it's enforced — brutally enforced — I don't see it making any real difference," he said.
It could as much as a year before the state makes a decision to lower the speed limit.
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