Slowing death on a deadly highway
Anyone who drove the old N.M. 44 highway before improvements were made knows that the stretch of road, now named U.S. 550, is smoother and easier to navigate. However, a better road is not the best road — and as Thom Cole’s report (“U.S. 550’s fatal flaws,” June 11) in the Sunday New Mexican showed, both driver inattention and road design flaws have created a dangerous stretch through parts of Northern New Mexico. One police officer from the village of Cuba summed it up best: “Basically, anywhere from San Ysidro [north] is a killing zone.”
U.S. 550 through New Mexico starts in Bernalillo, north of Albuquerque, winding northwest 175 miles. It runs through San Ysidro, Cuba, Nageezi, Bloomfield and Aztec, serving both as a commuter route for people who live and work near those villages, but also as a highway linking New Mexico to southern Colorado. Its fatality rate is among the highest in the state, close to death totals on Interstate 40 — which carries a heavier traffic load and as a result, logically should have more accidents and fatalities.
The road was widened to four lanes back in 2001, a $300 million effort designed to improve a state highway known to be unsafe. Drivers would leave early in the morning to try and avoid drunken drivers or heavy traffic loads. No one wanted to drive the road after the bars closed. It was a road to be bypassed whenever possible. Improvements were welcomed.
The question now is whether improvements have made enough of a difference — it’s a smoother drive, but still too often a deadly one.
Two immediate fixes come to mind. One is free. The speed limit on U.S. 550 is set at 70 miles per hour, something many drivers ignore. It’s easy to understand why. The road is an inviting one to take fast; its surface seems to cry out for speed. Driving fast makes it harder to correct for a mistake or to avoid drivers who drift out of their lanes into oncoming traffic. Lower the speed limit and ticket speeders.
The northbound and southbound lanes are separated by a 6-foot-wide paved, flat median. There’s a rumble strip in the median but no barriers. The Federal Highway Administration’s recommendations call for medians at least 30 feet wide on such highways. That didn’t happen, evidently, in an effort to keep costs under control.
The medians are the second fix, then. Some day, the highway will need major work. Medians can, and should, be widened then. Until that day, install barriers — use traffic statistics to identify danger spots — at selected stretches of the road. That way, vehicles crossing into oncoming traffic will meet resistance. Lives can be saved.
Cable barriers have proved to be more than 90 percent effective in preventing cross-median vehicle travel; they’ve been installed on interstates in New Mexico. We need some at U.S. 550. It’s not a perfect solution — ideally, the median would be wider so a vehicle could not reach the opposite lane as it pressed against the cable. Concrete barriers also could be a solution; however, cable costs $150,000 a mile to install compared to $1 million for concrete.
Driver error is also an issue. Drivers are tired, they speed, they fail to adjust to bad weather conditions and too many people get behind the wheel after drinking. While it is impossible to change individual driver behavior in every case (more patrols, lower speed limits and more attention when serving drinkers would help) we can correct design flaws. When humans make mistakes, the results do not have to be fatal.
Drivers can see reminders of the road’s deadly toll every time they hit the highway, where memorials to the fallen dot the sides of the road. Called descansos, these crosses, flowers and other tributes, honor loved ones lost to crashes. Near Nageezi, there are five white crosses, perhaps the most poignant tribute on a highway with more than its share. The wreck happened before improvements were made, and most people don’t remember the family. It happened in 1994, when members of the Jacquez family were traveling along the road and a drunken driver hit their car head on, killing a mother, two daughters and two grandchildren. (A passenger in the drunken driver’s car also died.) Nellie Jacquez, Lorraine Jacquez, Sandra Jacquez, baby Lazarus and 5-year-old Latesha, are remembered by those crosses.
More recently, it was four members of the Crawford family who lost their lives. A truck of men on the way home from work hit the Crawfords’ vehicle on a Friday in May. That was this year. In 2014, the Miller family — mother, father and two children — were driving home to Texas (again on a Friday) when a truck crossed the median and hit their vehicle head on. They were killed instantly.
And so it goes, on this deadly highway. Unless, of course, the state steps up. Add median barriers, lower speed limits and fund police patrols on these otherwise lethal roads. Incremental changes, yes, but ones that will save lives.