tbn.al wrote:In the paper this morning the Georgia DOT has reiterated it's stand that the exit ramp conforms to all federal codes and was not the cause of the bus accident. However, just to be on the safe side they have decided to improve the ramp with larger signs, more visibile striping and raised roadbed reflectors across the entire lane to act as rumble strips. The ramp was closed for repair at 9:00 AM this morning and the work should be completed on Thursday. It's a good thing, but it won't help those poor Bluffton kids or their families. This really should have been done last year when it killed that lady from Dalton.
In my experience, the sorts of things they did are unlikely to have made any difference in the accident rate or in any particular accident that got a lot of publicity. It's the stuff they do to placate grandstanding politicians (and the media and citizen groups who goad them).
Rumble strips? Was the bus driver asleep? What effect is introducing an intentional loss of traction in the stopping zone supposed to accomplish? Bigger signs? Is there any real reason to believe that the signs are too small? Were the markings the reason why the driver had the accident? I'm unfamiliar with the ramp in question, but there are indeed guidelines for signs and markings on freeways, and they are defined in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. I'm quite sure the signs and marking in question complied with those standards, because the feds wouldn't have approved the use of federal funds for construction if they didn't (okay, that's a theoretical statement). But the biggest sign and boldest marking can still be ignored or misread.
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement on traffic control devices and I've seen my share of bad freeway guide signing and marking. But the usual public reaction is for more and bigger signs. We already have forests of signs at every intersection--so many that people don't even see them any more. Go to any given busy intersections, especially at a divided highway, and take a look. Count the signs. I think you'll be surprised.
One accident, however tragic, does not define a trend. Neither do two. Chance bad luck plays such a big role in accidents, and the contributors are so numerous and varied, that it is nearly impossible even for experts to link cause and effect. I've testified in a number of tort liability cases and found that even the smartest people have very poor ability to read an accident report, understand the traffic controls, and draw a reasonable conclusion about what happened. Remember, accidents are rare--usually less than one accident per million vehicle miles. Rare things are by nature hard to understand and predict.
Everyone who has a driver's license is an arm-chair traffic engineer. It's easy to diagnose something after the fact, whether or not the diagnosis is correct, because it will never be tested. If people forget about the recent accidents before the next one occurs, then they will think the rumble strips actually worked, without any hope of testing whether the same result would have happened had nothing been done at all.
And traffic engineers are so often pulled this way and that by grandstanding politicians and concerned-but-misguided citizens that they spend all their time applying such window dressing to locations that merely
seem unsafe. The places that seem unsafe often don't have a high accident rate, because the apparent danger is obvious and drivers take more care. It's the places that seem safe but have hidden faults that cause problems. But those don't ever get much attention, and those programs are the first to be cut and the last to be the pet program of supportive politicians. After all, everyone hates traffic congestion and blame the traffic engineers for it, not they and their fellow motorists for filling up the roadway (or for their do-gooder neighbors whose concern for right-of-way acquisition, aesthetic sensibilities, or political agenda prevented the roadway from being designed properly).
If a traffic engineer spends time really trying to identify the problem locations, the bosses will complain that their bitching is not being responded to. And if the traffic engineer spends time responding to the bitching, there's much less time available to be more systematic. Welcome to the real world. Only in the wealthier suburban communities is there hope of enough resources to do both. Bloke's complaint about Memphis is that the politicians are spending money on crap (e.g., sports stadia) instead of on basic functions of government. I include the transportation network as a basic function. Bloke might not, but our quality of life depends in no small measure on that comprehensive network of relatively good highways.
So, the statement "they should have..." is usually a presumptive reaction. You have no idea what they did. They may very well have analyzed the intersection and determined that only digging it up and rebuilding it would do any real good (this time ignoring the constraints placed on them by politicians and do-gooders the first time around). Maybe that location fell way down on the list of high-accident locations, and was just the unlucky spot where a high-profile tragedy occurred. My bet is that the main fault was a bus driver not paying attention or driving too fast for the conditions, or similar actions by a driver in front of the bus.
Rick "been there; done that" Denney
