Engineers asked to study safety on U.S. 550
State transportation secretary makes request after ‘New Mexican’ article on highway’s death toll
State Transportation Secretary Tom Church has asked department engineers to look into what can be done to improve safety on U.S. 550 after a report in The New Mexican that the road has become one of New Mexico’s deadliest highways for motorists and their passengers.
Department of Transportation spokeswoman Emilee Cantrell confirmed Tuesday that Church had issued the directive but declined to provide details about what exactly he asked to be done.
The department has declined to make Church or someone else available for an interview to discuss safety on U.S. 550, which runs from Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque, to the Four Corners region. The New Mexican reported Sunday that for the years 2013-15, the much busier Interstate 40 was the only highway in New Mexico with more motorist and passenger deaths than the state’s stretch of U.S. 550.
For much of its New Mexico stretch, U.S. 550 has a 6-foot-wide paved median separating its two northbound and two southbound lanes, and many of the deaths on the road in recent years have been caused by motorists crossing the median into oncoming traffic.
An Aztec family of four died on the highway near Cuba when a truck crossed the median and hit their SUV in May. The truck driver, who also was killed, might have been drinking, according to investigators.
U.S. 550 is the old N.M. 44, a road notorious for crashes that was reconstructed and widened to four lanes in work completed in 2001. The narrow median is the result of construction cost-cutting, according to a 2006 report by The University of New Mexico.
The speed limit is 70 mph on most of U.S. 550 in New Mexico, although the highway was designed for a top speed of 65 mph, the UNM report says.
Cantrell said last week that the Department of Transportation studied 135 miles of U.S. 550 in 2013 and that installation of cable barriers was discussed. She didn’t say why the agency decided against the barriers, which have been installed on some other roads in the state.
Cable barriers are about 95 percent effective in preventing vehicles, including large trucks, from entering opposing lanes, according to a 2012 report by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
A total of 125 people have died on U.S. 550 since the reconstruction of N.M. 44 was completed. The deadliest year was 2014, when 17 people lost their lives, including a family of four returning to Texas after a vacation. The family’s van was hit head-on by a truck.