Over the past three to four months TX-DOT has removed the shoulder, or acceleration lane.

"When you pull out off our road onto 96, you're taking your life into your own hands," says concerned homeowner, Roger Michel.

Roger Michel is talking about stretch of Highway 96 where there is no shoulder.

Roger and his wife Pat have lived just north of Jasper, in Brookeland for 15 years and up until a few months ago had an acceleration lane to use when pulling out of their neighborhood.

When the shoulder went away and the center lane was put in, the Michel's started getting concerned about pulling onto the highway.

Now they are asking TX-DOT to help them find a way to make it safer.

"We like the turning lane, it is beneficial to a point but once they get it fixed it might be great," says Michel.

TX-DOT says the construction is temporary and they are putting a shoulder back in, but people who live here say in the meantime, they feel like they are in danger.

“I almost got hit head-on twice, and my wife almost got in a wreck pulling out of here because there was somebody in the turning lane and somebody coming over the hill so there was almost a three car pileup right there," says Michel.

TX-DOT’s Marc Shepherd says people in the area had asked for a center lane.

"We had to go out and do some work on the foundation of the roadway and do some other work, including adding a center left turn lane to help prevent rear end collisions. Center left turn lanes are really good about getting people off main turn lanes when making a left hand turn," says Shepherd.

Shepherd says to make a center lane, TX-DOT had to take away part of the shoulder. "Anytime you add a center left turn lane you've got to eat up part of the shoulder to do it, you've only got so much pavement to work with. So what we did was removed some of the restripe it to the point where we're going to lose about 6 feet of shoulder on each side. So what we're going to do is look back and see if there's something we can do, maybe add a little more shoulder," says Shepherd.

Shepherd says the project is in its last stages, but they can go back and look at widening the shoulder at a later time.