OLYMPIA — A new state report out today concludes that the number of deadly accidents decrease wherever the state puts up cable barriers in highway medians.
The state Department of Transportation study reaffirms its June 2007 assessment that fatal accidents decline by up to 73 percent on stretches of highway where cable median barriers are properly installed.
The report analyzes the history collisions on 177 miles of highway with cable barriers, including the 43 miles added in 2007.
This year’s report, and last year’s, resulted from an investigation ordered by Gov. Chris Gregoire into the causes of a high number of fatal crossover accidents on a stretch of I-5 between Marysville and Arlington where cable barriers exist in both directions.
She acted following a February 2007 crash in which a sport utility vehicle traveling southbound on I-5 went through two barriers and into oncoming northbound traffic, hitting a bus and killing its driver. He was the eighth person to die in a cross-median crash since 2000.
As part of last year’s report, a national traffic safety expert recommended concrete barriers be installed on the 10-mile section of I-5 between Highway 528 and Highway 530 where the fatal crashes occurred.
Next spring, the state will seek bids on that $27 million project. Construction is to be finished in 2010. No fatalities have occurred on that stretch since the one in February 2007.
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