A 27-year-old Robertsdale woman died Thursday morning after her car collided head-on with a tractor-trailer on a rural stretch of Baldwin County highway, according to Alabama State Troopers.
Heather Elyse Propst was pronounced dead at the scene by medics following the crash, which occurred around 10:45 a.m. on Baldwin County Road 122, roughly 22 miles southeast of Bay Minette. Trooper Jamie Maloy said Propst had been driving a 2012 Nissan Altima at the time of the collision.
The driver of the tractor-trailer, identified by troopers as Michael Joseph Vaughan and driving a 2002 Freightliner, was not injured in the crash. State troopers did not release information on what caused the two vehicles to collide, and the investigation into the circumstances of the wreck continued through Thursday afternoon.
Baldwin County Road 122 runs through a largely rural section of the county, connecting smaller communities southeast of Bay Minette. Like many of the county’s secondary highways, the road carries a mix of local traffic and larger commercial vehicles, including trucks serving the area’s agricultural and timber operations.
Head-on collisions involving passenger vehicles and commercial trucks are among the most severe types of crashes investigated by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s Highway Patrol Division, given the size and weight disparity between the vehicles involved. Troopers statewide have periodically urged drivers on rural two-lane highways to use caution when passing, particularly on roads without a center turn lane or additional passing lanes.
Fatal crashes on Baldwin County’s rural roadways have drawn continued attention from state and local officials in recent years as the county’s population has grown and traffic volumes have increased on roads originally built to handle far lighter loads. Local governments and the Alabama Department of Transportation have periodically studied corridor safety improvements, including turn lanes, rumble strips and shoulder widening, on some of the county’s busier rural routes.
Propst’s death added to the tally of traffic fatalities investigated by state troopers in Baldwin County during 2015, a year in which the rapidly growing coastal county continued to see rising numbers of vehicles on both its rural highways and its more congested beach-area roads.
Alabama State Troopers said the investigation into the crash on County Road 122 remained active as they worked to determine what led to the fatal collision.