Cable barriers on interstates saving lives www.privateofficer.com

Louisville KY Oct 16 2009

Andrea Elliott was on the Gene Snyder Freeway, headed to her boyfriend’s house, when another car crossed into her lane.
She hit the brakes, swerved, drove into the median and struck a cable barrier.
Her 2006 Ford Five Hundred was totaled in the July 19 wreck, and she was left with hip, shoulder and neck pain.
But Elliott, a 34-year-old Fern Creek mother of two, knows it could have been worse.
“If it wasn’t for those wires, I wouldn’t be here today,” she said of the median cable barrier, installation of which started in 2007. “I would have been in oncoming traffic. I would have been hit.”
Transportation and law enforcement officials say median cable barriers in Jefferson and Bullitt counties in Kentucky and Clark and Floyd counties in Indiana may have saved hundreds of lives since they began appearing along area highways in 2006.
The barriers, which are cheaper than their concrete counterparts, improve safety by clamping down on vehicles when struck, preventing the vehicle from rebounding into traffic. They also absorb the energy of an impact more than concrete barriers do, minimizing injuries to passengers and vehicle damage.

“They have been extremely successful … dramatically so,” said Lt. Doug Sweeney, commander of the Louisville Metro Police traffic unit.
Jefferson County now has 51 miles of cable barriers on Interstates 64, 71 and 265 and Ky. 841, said Andrea Clifford, a public information officer for the state highway department. She said they were hit 609 times between 2006 and Aug. 10.
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In Bullitt County, the 6.2 miles of cable barriers on Interstate 65 — which were completed in April — have been hit 14 times as of late September, Clifford said. There were 14 crossover crashes and three fatalities from crossovers between 2004 and April 15 on that stretch of road.
Bullitt had two fatalities caused by crossover crashes on Interstate 65 last year and has had four this year.
In September, a Shepherdsville mother and son were killed in a crossover crash on a section of I-65 in Bullitt where there aren’t median cable barriers.
“If there had been a cable barrier there, it would have prevented that accident,” said Trooper Bruce Reeves, a public information officer for the Kentucky State Police.

In Indiana, the roughly 23 miles of cable barriers in Clark and Floyd counties are so new that the state hasn’t started tallying hits to the barriers, said Marvin Jenkins, a public information officer for the Indiana Department of Transportation. But the barriers, which were completed in late summer, already have sustained “several” hits, he said.
“You figure that any one of those could have crossed over,” Sweeney said.
Cheaper than concreteKentucky has found cable barriers to be cheaper to install than concrete barriers.
Cable barriers cost roughly $130,000 per mile, Clifford said. In comparison, a 50-inch-high concrete median barrier wall costs $400,000 a mile, and that doesn’t include the required earthwork, drainage and pavement.
“We feel they are effective in saving lives and reducing crashes and reducing injuries,” Clifford said of the cable barriers. “And we can’t put a dollar value on that.”
“I think they ought to make a law that they can’t build a Kentucky interstate without them,” said Bullitt County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Danny Thompson, who is among those who believe the barriers should be extended across the region.
But while both Kentucky and Indiana plan more cable barriers elsewhere, neither state has money for more barriers in the Louisville metropolitan area, officials said.
Brenda Clohessy, whose 18-year-old son Kayde died in a crossover accident on the Snyder Freeway in 2005, said officials need to find the money.
Her son’s crash, which killed three other people and was set off by a blowout on his Subaru, led to a concurrent resolution in the state House and Senate to install cable barriers on the freeway.
Clohessy, 43, who lives near Highview, said she got emotional shortly after the barriers were installed at the site of the accident, which was near the LaGrange Road exit.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” she said. “Thank God they put those there, but I wish they were there earlier.”

Jay Huber, president of the Kentucky Motorcycle Association/Kentucky Biker Association, called the barriers “a cheese slicer.”
While the cable barriers would prevent a biker from crossing into oncoming traffic, bikers who hit them can be seriously injured, he said.
“It will cut you in half,” said Mike Ballard, president of TRAIN MRO Inc., an Ohio-based motorcycle-rights organization with a focus on safety and education. “We have always had a stance against cable barriers because they are so dangerous to motorcyclists.”
One solution could be installing nylon straps or mesh over the wires, Huber said.
But these additional items would drive up the cost and limit the amount of funding to install cable barriers, Clifford said. And no motorcyclists have been killed or seriously injured from hitting cable barriers in Kentucky, she said.
“We don’t have any of the distractions that motorists have,” said Mike Canchola, chairman of the state Motorcycle Advisory Commission for Highway Safety, explaining the lack of accidents. “We’re not eating. We’re not calling on the cell phone.”
The commission has not taken a stance on the barriers and is monitoring accidents involving the wires, he said.

There have been two local instances where vehicles have gotten through barriers.
Clifford said in one instance, a semi tractor-trailer on Interstate 71 rolled over the top of cable barriers, which are not designed to contain such a large truck. Another time, a vehicle went through the cables at a low point in the median on I-71, but that spot has been fixed, she said.
No one has died locally because of an impact with the cable barrier system, Clifford said. A fatality occurred in 2008, though, after a vehicle hit a sign truss along the Snyder Freeway, bounced off and struck the cable barrier system. A person was ejected from the vehicle in that incident and died.
The barriers also can prolong emergency workers’ response times if they need to get to an accident on the other side of a cable barrier, said Reeves, of the Kentucky State Police.
“It may be a situation where I have to go two to three miles to where I can get to a cut-through” to the other side of the interstate, he said. “But that’s not a big issue most of the time.”
Kentucky has only two planned projects for more cable barriers, on Interstate 275 in Northern Kentucky and on Interstate 75 in Whitley County, Clifford said.
Indiana has plans for more cable barriers on Interstate 74, which runs from the Cincinnati area to Indianapolis to Illinois, Jenkins said.
Tiffany Robinson, of Prospect, who wrote state and federal politicians asking for more median barriers in 2006, said she felt the structures are making a difference.
“Statewide, it would be great to see them,” she said.