After the second study resulted in no further movement toward divided highway construction, locals formed the County Residents Action for Safer Highways (CRASH) in response to the significantly higher collision rates along the two-lane sections of US 113 compared to the state average. The high collision rate, which included 42 fatal crashes between 1980 and 1997, led CRASH to rally community support and intensely lobby MDSHA to expand US 113 to four lanes. MDSHA responded in 1995 by initiating the US 113 Planning Study, which recommended expanding US 113 to a divided highway from Berlin to the Delaware state line and from Snow Hill to Berlin. The agency needed to persuade other involved agencies to make the proposed expansion their top priority, because at the time traffic volumes on the highway did not meet the thresholds beyond which the highway would need to be expanded to a four-lane divided highway.