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Fla. Turnpike Guardrails Reason For Lower Death Rate

November 8, 2005

Thanks to a major expansion of median guardrails on Florida's Turnpike, so-called ''crossover crash'' deaths are down dramatically this year.

According to state transportation officials, from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, seven people were killed in crossover crashes, in which a vehicle leaves its side of the highway, crosses the median and often slams into a vehicle going the opposite direction. The number of fatal crossover crashes on the state's biggest toll road had climbed steadily over the past four years. In the first nine months of last year, 39 people died in such wrecks.

The difference: Two years ago the turnpike began a $54 million, 160 mile project installing guardrails or cable barrier systems in narrow medians, mainly from Wildwood to Fort Pierce, but also in parts of South Florida, including the Homestead Extension in Miami-Dade County.

As guardrails went up, deaths went down, according to statistics from Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, which manages the turnpike system. Engineers are working on plans for guardrails or similar devices to keep cars out of the canals that line the highway. Through the end of September, four people died in turnpike canal crashes. Eight died in canal crashes both last year and in 2003.

''Truly fantastic,'' the turnpike's chief operating officer, Chris Warren, said of the reduction in deaths. ''It's a great day in the state of Florida when I hear those kinds of numbers,'' added State Rep. Irv Slosberg, a Boca Raton Democrat who was instrumental in speeding up the turnpike median guardrail project. Slosberg, whose teenage daughter was killed in a car crash, has carved a niche for himself as a seat belt and traffic safety advocate in the Legislature.

After a survey showed the majority of crossover crashes on the state's interstate system happen within a mile of an interchange or on-off ramp, the Florida Department of Transportation will be installing median guardrails at almost every interchange, with the exception of some rural ones on Interstate 10 in North Florida. Interchanges and ramps get priority in the $40 million project, which has just begun construction, because that's where the state estimates it can save at least 50 lives a year, said Patrick Brady, a state transportation safety engineer in Tallahassee. The project will end in 2007.

When people slow down at exit ramps, drivers behind them sometimes react erratically, leaving themselves nowhere to go but the median to avoid rear-ending the car ahead, experts say. As cars come on to the interstate, some do so slowly or erratically, forcing drivers already on the highway to make quick moves that sometime put them into the median.

Brady said whenever the state adds a lane of travel, reducing the width of the median, new guardrails will almost always go in. ''Over all, median barriers, including guardrails, are extremely effective reducing crossover crashes,'' Brady said. ''As an engineering solution, this one kind of jumps out at you.''