Highway barriers require upkeep for safety
Some say maintenance should be more frequent
Hours before a head-on crash that killed a family of four March 29 along a stretch of Interstate 71 in Delaware County, motorists would have passed damaged cable barriers a few miles north.
And some likely wondered how often these systems – designed to prevent often deadly crossover crashes – are repaired.
Maintaining the barriers, which have become more common nationwide since the mid-1990s and in Ohio since the mid-2000s, is the responsibility of the Ohio Department of Transportation, its various vendors and installers and those who patrol the freeways and notice and report damage, transportation experts say.
Repairs happen after cars strike the barriers and produce visible damage. But some experts say that maintenance should be more frequent.
Killed in the crash that occurred just before 8 p.m. were Abigail Sperl, 38, Brian Sperl, 42, Lincoln Sperl, 11, and Bastion Sperl, 14. Their Toyota RAV4 was in the southbound lanes near mile marker 125 when a northbound pickup truck lost control, crossed through the grass median and cable barrier and struck
their car head-on . The four died at the scene.
The driver of the pickup, Laylah Bordeau, 25, of Blacklick, suffered serious injuries. Expected charges have not yet been filed, as investigators wait on additional evidence.
Even a glancing swipe to a barrier can alter its cable tension and structural integrity, without showing visible damage, experts say.
That’s why Lake Erie Construction, which installs and services barrier systems in several Ohio counties including Delaware County, adjusts cable tensions on all of its Ohio barriers twice a year.
But a transportation engineer says the systems need more attention than that.
“Twice a year is not enough. ODOT should have their own technicians patrolling,” said Deogratias Eustace, a University of Dayton assistant professor of civil engineering and director of the school’s transportation lab.
When Eustace viewed ODOT video of the March 29 crash, he was shocked.
“It looked like there wasn’t any barrier there,” he said. “It was very unusual, very unique.”
The video showed the pickup veering across northbound traffic before striking the barriers at about a 30-degree angle before crossing into the southbound lanes, igniting the Sperl’s vehicle on impact and the pickup shortly after.
“My “initial guess was that the (pickup) was airborne, at high speed and may have jumped it,” Eustace said of the crossover impact. But State Highway Patrol photographs show steel cables and posts strewn across the median and into the southbound lanes.
When he learned that the cables barrier had been struck, Eustace said “It did not do the job – at all.”
Why the barrier didn’t hold or deflect the pickup truck is under investigation. Speed estimates have not been completed, although witnesses and video indicate that she was passing cars and weaving.
Built-in flexibility of cable barriers allow them to absorb impact and dissipate it, which reduces the impact and injury to vehicle occupants.
Eustace has contacted ODOT to request more information.
ODOT officials have said that they are waiting for the Highway Patrol’s final report.
There had been two other damaged sections of cable barriers last month, each within a 10-miles stretch of Interstate 71 near the fatal crash site.
Jim Bucher, of Grove City, said he was driving through the area hours before the March 29 crash and noticed them.
“I passed through that same area only a few hours earlier heading south on I-71 and commented to my brother and father that the cables were broke (n) from a previous crash,” he said in an email to The Dispatch.
Repairs where the deaths occurred were made within a few days by ODOT’S contractor, Lake Erie Construction, whose contract allows up to two weeks for repairs.
But the four cable barrier posts damaged in a March 16 crash about five miles north of the fatal crash were repaired on April 1, the same day that damaged cables further north in Morrow County also were fixed, said Breanna Badanes, ODOT spokeswoman. That’s a day longer than the contract requires.
Eustace said allowing two weeks for repairs in unacceptable. He said they should occur immediately, “especially on the freeway where you have a lot of traffic.” He said not doing is akin to leaving a broken traffic light at an intersection.
The damage was in separate links of cable and would not have affected the barrier integrity further south, Badanes said.
“Based on the maintenance history outlined above, ODOT has no reason to believe the cable barrier was not in working order at the time of the crash,” said Badanes. dnarciso@dispatch.com @Deannarciso