SMOKEY POINT – State engineers are investigating whether a barrier of steel cables that divides I-5 near Smokey Point did its job when a Ford Explorer came crashing through the median Wednesday.

The southbound Explorer crossed two lanes of traffic on I-5 and went across the median into northbound traffic, hitting a Chevy Suburban and a Toyota pickup.

The wreck killed a passenger in the Suburban, Megan M. Holschen, 18, of Bothell, and injured seven others.

As the Explorer crossed the median, it went through a barrier of three steel cables 21/2 feet high. The cable barrier runs along a 10-mile stretch of I-5 north of Marysville.

“I’m trying to get all the information I can from the police to see if there’s anything about the cable barrier that didn’t perform up to the expectations of it,” said sate Department of Transportation design engineer Richard Albin.

An initial review of the crash showed that the angle of the impact, about 45 degrees, was “much greater than what any of our barriers can accommodate,” Albin said.

It’s difficult to say whether any other type of barrier would have stopped the Explorer, even a concrete barrier, he said.

“No barrier is 100 percent effective,” he said. “We have people go through guardrails. We’ve had cases where vehicles have gone over concrete barriers.”

The stretch of I-5 north from about 88th Street NE in Marysville is one of three places in the state where cable barriers are used. Others are near Vancouver and south of Seattle.

The barriers were installed to prevent crossover accidents such as the one that happened Wednesday, Albin said, and have done their jobs.

At those three sites combined, 16 crossover crashes happened each year before the barriers were installed.

After the barriers were installed in the mid-’90s, the number dropped to an average of four per year, a transportation department study released in November 2003 showed.

The cable barriers were selected for I-5 north of Everett instead of concrete barriers or guardrails, Albin said.

Cable barriers are less likely to cause injuries when they’re struck, and were judged the best choice for the environment and less costly than concrete barriers.

Even given an unlimited budget, Albin said cable barriers would still be the best choice for that location.

“When a vehicle runs into a concrete barrier, it’s like hitting a wall,” he said. “There’s much less of a chance of injury with a cable barrier.”

All three kinds of barriers are tested to meet the national standard of being struck at a 25-degree angle at 62 mph, Albin said.

The State Patrol does the tests with a three-quarter-ton pickup. In five accidents studied by the transportation department, the vehicles that hit the cable barrier were larger, but none went through the cable barrier.

Had the Explorer hit a concrete barrier, it likely would have veered back into southbound traffic, causing injuries there, State Patrol trooper Lance Ramsay said.

“There’s nothing foolproof to keep a car from going through (the median), unless we had 10-foot barriers that went from Oregon to Canada, but that’s not realistic,” Ramsay said.

Cable barriers have prevented some cars from going through the median in the past near where the fatal crash happened, Ramsay said.

He said he saw a pickup truck going about 60 mph hit the cables about two miles north of the fatal crash.

“It went right into the cables and the cables caught the truck. They did their job,” he said.

On Wednesday, the cables likely slowed the Explorer down, Ramsay said, but accident investigators are still trying to determine how and why the crash happened.

Investigators are also still trying to determine how fast the Explorer was going.

Detectives hoped to speak with the driver of the Explorer Juliann Odom, 22, of Bellevue on Monday.

Odom was in stable condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, a nursing supervisor said.

The driver of the Suburban, Martha Holschen, 47, of Bothell was upgraded to serious condition but remained in the intensive care unit at Harborview. Holschen is the mother of the deceased woman.

Another daughter in Holschen’s vehicle, Joli Ann Holschen, also was in serious condition at the Seattle hospital.

It could be weeks before the investigation is complete, Ramsay said.

Reporter Diana Hefley contributed to this story.

Reporter Katherine Schiffner: 425-339-3436 or schiffner@ heraldnet.com.