Every year people traveling the highways in Louisiana are hurt or killed in car accidents. One of the worst types of car crashes is a head-on collision, and the impact of a head-on collision is made worse on the highway because of high speed limits. To reduce the number of head-on collisions in Louisiana, additional cable barriers will be installed next month on areas of Interstate 10 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Cable barriers are designed to prevent head-on collisions by deflecting vehicles and preventing them from crossing the median of the highway. Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans there are areas of Interstate 10 that lack an effective cross-traffic barrier. Therefore the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development will install an additional 20 miles of cable barriers in four parishes.
One family wishes the cable barriers were in place while they were traveling on Interstate 10 in March 2008. The family was traveling back to Baton Rouge after visiting relatives in New Orleans when a drunk driver crossed a portion of Interstate 10 where there was no barrier and hit the family. The family’s 8-year-old was killed in the crash. Said a Louisiana State Police Colonel, “It just simply would not have happened had there been barriers there.”
The success of cable barriers along highways elsewhere in Louisiana helps demonstrate the State Policeman’s point. Since similar barriers were installed in St. Tammany the number of fatal head-on accidents on Interstate 12 has dropped to zero.
The cable barrier project on Interstate 10 is expected to be completed by next spring.
Source: fox8live.com, “Cable barriers coming to south Louisiana highways,” Kim Holden, Sept. 13, 2011
