Beaufort County has seen its share of snow this winter and there’s no telling if another winter storm will be heading our way. Though most residents are ready for spring, there may be more snow in store for us.

Over the past week, we’ve run a daily poll on our website asking the public how they felt about the DOT’s response and efforts to make roads drivable during our flurry of storms. As you can see on this page, 63 percent of responders said DOT did an excellent job in Beaufort County; 23 percent said they’ve given an average performance; and 14 percent said the response from DOT was poor.

If one were to guess at such things, one might make an assumption that the 14 percent live on the roads less traveled in Beaufort County.

Regardless of what the public believes about DOT’s performance, 1^st Sgt. Brandon Craft with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol had something interesting to say about DOT and Beaufort County. Craft is with Troop A, District IV, which covers Beaufort, Washington, Tyrrell and Hyde counties, so if accidents are happening on the roads in these counties — he knows about it.

There were plenty of accidents during our recent snowfalls, but Craft said a bare few were located in Beaufort County. He partially chalked that up to the fact that most people stayed safe by staying home when the roads were potentially bad, but only partially.

Craft said during and after the storms troopers, who were out driving on the roads, reported a noticeable difference between the state of the roads in surrounding counties and those in Beaufort County. Our roads were better, so much so that they could tell the difference at the county lines. Draft credited DOT employees for that difference.

“We’re very fortunate that we have the DOT we have in Beaufort County,” he said.

Better, clearer roads mean safety for drivers and, according to Craft, during our bad weather of late, we have DOT to thank for helping to keep our residents out of harm’s way.