Working to keep drivers on the right side
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State tries various methods to warn wrong-way motorists
10/25/2007 -
Robert Ortiz wants to stop wrong-way drivers.Ortiz, the state Transportation Department deputy secretary of highway operations, has led the department's response to last November's accident near Eldorado that killed five members of a Las Vegas, N.M., family and Tesuque resident Dana Papst, who was driving drunk the wrong way on Interstate 25 before he plowed into the family's van.
The department is considering just about any practical concept its engineers can imagine to warn drivers form heading the wrong way on the interstate.
At the offramp in Eldorado, the department has rearranged signs and looked at redesigning a median that might confuse some drivers. It tried flashing solar powered warning lights and colored reflectors in the pavement to warn wrong-way drivers.
Ortiz doesn't think that's enough. He wants those drivers stopped.
Since the Nov. 11 accident, the department has installed about 400 signs statewide urging drivers to dial #DWI — or #394 — to report suspected drunken drivers. "That is a direct result of that first incident with the guy (Papst) that was coming off the airplane that was drunk," Ortiz said.
However, not only drunken drivers head the wrong direction on the interstate. Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said his officers told him of four recent occasions when they had stopped a wrong-way driver in the Eldorado area. Each time, he said, the driver was just confused.
On Sept. 30, witnesses told deputies a wrong-way driver caused an I-25 crash that left a Santa Fe woman critically injured. Deputies never located the red car witnesses reported driving the wrong way. Solano suspected the driver headed south on the northbound lane from the Eldorado offramp.
Last summer, the department experimented with solar-powered flashing lights that warn wrong-way drivers at an on ramp near Santa Fe. That didn't work. The lights didn't perform well when the solar panels got dirty, Ortiz said.
"We also looked at spikes," he said.
California highway officials already tried that. Spikes, typically used at parking garages to prevent drivers from entering through an exit, are designed for slow traffic, Ortiz said. When spike systems fail, as is likely in traffic moving 35 mph, they sometimes don't retract into the pavement and can flatten tires of vehicles going the right direction, Ortiz said.
More recently, crews tried something else new. Reflectors in the pavement now glow red when lighted by the headlights of a vehicle going the wrong way up the offramp at Eldorado. On the other side, the reflectors shine white, indicating the correct direction of travel. Similar reflectors warn wrong-way drivers entering northbound at Old Pecos Trail in Santa Fe and at La Cienega, south of town on Interstate 25.
Ortiz said the department is experimenting with color-coded reflectors at a half dozen off-ramps in the state. After a winter of snowplowing, engineers will see how they held up.
On Wednesday, some of the reflectors set into pavement at the Eldorado offramp in the past month were already broken on the red side. At La Cienega, only about half the reflectors are visible in headlights.
Department engineers are now looking at ways to redesign the median at Eldorado so drivers exiting the freeway can turn left onto U.S. 285, but drivers would have to cross a median to enter the offramp.
"We are doing all of the things that are obvious — making the signs bigger, making them a little lower — but that's not a positive approach to eliminate the wrong-way movements," Ortiz said.
By "positive," Ortiz said, he means positively stopping wrong-way drivers before or soon after they get on an Interstate. "That's what I want is if it senses the wrong-way movement, it stops the vehicle. To me, it's got to be a sensor that acts as a trigger," he said.
A New Mexico Senate memorial this year, passed in response to the Papst crash, asked the department to explore ways to stop wrong-way drivers. When a draft study crossed Ortiz's desk, he sent it back to his engineers for more work. He asked them to review what other states are trying and to review research by the National Transportation Safety Board.
He's thinking about devices that can shut down some newer cars with a burst of electromagnetic energy, triggered by something that senses a wrong-way driver. Maybe a sensor could alert law enforcement of wrong-way drivers, he said. Or cameras could let somebody somewhere keep an eye on problem offramps.
Some ideas might be too costly, but Ortiz said he asked his engineers not to rule out ideas on cost alone. He wants to know what might work.
Eventually, cars might even be equipped to warn drivers if they get on a highway in the wrong direction. Ortiz said Florida is exploring a way to relieve traffic congestion by automatically maintaining close distances between cars, and similar technology might be used to prevent wrong-way incidents.
Generally, wrong-way driving on interstate highways is rare, Ortiz said, but when it happens, the consequences can be catastrophic and public. He said the report he hands legislators will review solutions that don't just ask drivers to do the right thing, but which also prevent them from making deadly wrong-way moves.
With the document back on engineers' desks for more review, it will be at least a month before a final version is ready for public release, Ortiz said. The study will be ready in time for next year's legislative session, he said.
Contact David Collins at 986-3064 or dcollins@sfnewmexican.com.