A 54-year-old man died early Saturday morning after his Toyota RAV4 blew a tire, slammed into the center wall of eastbound I-20, careened across the highway, and struck a tree before catching fire near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive NW. He was the only person in the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene around 2:30 a.m.
The crash happened around 2:35 a.m. Saturday, according to the Atlanta Police Department, which logged the incident under report number 262340265. As reported by FOX 5 Atlanta, police say the driver appears to have lost control after a possible tire blowout, sending the SUV into the highway’s center wall before it crossed the eastbound lanes and hit a tree. Authorities have not confirmed any additional mechanical or environmental factors beyond the suspected blowout.
Fire Erupts After Impact With Tree
The RAV4 caught fire after hitting the tree, according to police. Local station 11Alive independently confirmed the sequence of events, reporting that the man was pronounced dead at the scene after his SUV veered off the road, struck the tree, and burst into flames following the suspected tire failure. Police have not yet released the victim’s identity, and it remains unclear whether next-of-kin notifications have been completed.
The Atlanta Police Department’s Accident Investigations Unit is handling the probe into what led up to the crash. Georgia law sets a clear bar for tire safety on state highways: under Georgia Code § 40-8-74, passenger vehicle tires must keep at least 2/32 of an inch of tread in all major grooves and stay free of cuts, breaks, or sidewall separations. Whether the RAV4’s tires met that standard, or showed signs of prior wear, is among the open questions investigators have not yet answered.
A Familiar and Dangerous Stretch of Highway
The crash site sits right at the boundary between Atlanta Police Zone 1 and Zone 4, a division created when the department redrew its beat system for southwest Atlanta. It is not the first fatal wreck at this interchange — in June 2021, police investigated another deadly crash there after a vehicle exiting the highway ran a stop sign and triggered a multi-car pileup that killed a passenger and sent several others to the hospital…