The Carroll County Accident

The Carroll County Accident is a 1968 country song written by Bob Ferguson, and recorded by Porter Wagoner. It was a hit for Wagoner and became one of his signature songs.

In it, the singer tells the story of a single-car accident which occurs just inside the county line near his hometown. The passenger, an upstanding member of the community and a happily married man, dies; while the driver, a woman not his wife but also well-respected, survives to testify that she was taking him to town on an errand of mercy.

The singer describes examining the wreckage and finding evidence of an extramarital affair between the two. He promptly disposes of the evidence and swears himself to silence. He does this in order to preserve their reputations in the county because, as he reveals in the last verse, the man killed was his father.

The song reached #2 on "Billboard's" Hot Country Songs, No. 1 on the Cash Box country singles chart, and #92 on the Billboard Hot 100

According to Ferguson, the song was written when he passed through Carroll County when driving from Nashville to a concert for the Choctaw Indians in Philadelphia, Miss. He recounted that he passed a sign for Carroll County in Tennessee, which inspired the song's title. When he finished the song, he saw a sign for another Carroll County in Mississippi.