More than 30 million people are travelling by car during this Thanksgiving holiday. That’s about 2 percent more than last year.
While driving may be up, transportation departments and police hope another trend continues: fatal accidents are declining in some states, Wisconsin included.
Yesterday, we described how officials here are using advertising campaigns and beefed up law enforcement to combat drunk driving and improve highway safety. Today, we take a bird’s eye look at the role engineering plays in making for a safer ride on freeways.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s department says there’s not enough data yet for a statistical comparison of how much safer the new Marquette Interchange is compared to its predecessor. But, standing here on the 16th Street Viaduct and looking down on I 94, you can see some of the reasons why deputies say they’re responding to fewer accidents in the Marquette.
The new nest of ramps and concrete ribbons that snake through downtown feature what engineers call a “softer geometry”. Ramps have been relocated to the right hand side of the highway to reduce potentially dangerous lane changing. Gentler curves help prevent truck rollovers.
And, Milwaukee County Sheriff Patrol Captain Tom Meverden says wider distress lanes allow squads to respond more quickly to accidents.
“What we’ve found is that it’s easier for us to get our other resources that we need there such as fire and two trucks to the scene due to the layout and design. When the interchange was being designed, the Department of Transportation was very good about reaching out for us and asking for input,” Meverden says.
The outreach did not end with the Marquette. Meverden says the sheriff’s department also sat down with DOT planners to sketch how to modernize the southern portion of I 94. Like the Marquette, safety is a priority in that $1.9 billion project reshaping the highway from the Mitchell Interchange to the Illinois border.
Bob Gutierrez is the design chief.
He says like the Marquette, the use of “clover leaf” on-ramps will be discontinued. Instead, the new entrance ramps will help motorists get lined up directly with the freeway lane they’ll be driving in.
“If you can get folks in their lane assignments prior to that interchange, you’ll have a lot better free flow movement through the interchange,” Gutierrez says.
Gutierrez says there are other safety improvements planned for the North/South I 94 reconstruction project. For instance, three tunnels –each longer than two football fields, will link I 94 and 894 in the Mitchell Interchange.
“For those tunnel configurations we incorporated quite a bit of lighting in the tunnels. What we did with that was, again, we’re part of the neighborhood and we wanted to be sure that those features met with the surrounding area,” Gutierrez says.
Gutierrez says the tunnels will lower the elevation of the Mitchell Interchange, creating a maze that should be less stressful for motorists.
In addition to the evolutionary science of highway design making freeways safer, technology is entering the picture.
Ken Kobetsky is an engineer with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. He says freeways like the Marquette have begun using sensors to collect traffic data and communicate it to message boards. They can eliminate dangerous surprises by alerting motorists to trouble ahead. In the future, Kobetsky says electronics will play a greater role in highway safety by adding features to the vehicles themselves.
“In fact, there are some prototypes now where the car knows where the edge of the road is, where the vehicle ahead of it is, where the vehicle behind it is, and whether there is a sufficient gap between the vehicles to allow the vehicle to either stop or to reduce its speed,” Kobetsky says.
No one we spoke with is predicting precisely when the day will come that drivers become more like passengers in their vehicles. But, there is consensus that new freeway design is making them safer than ever before.
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