Bridge support at Route 8 crash site had no guardrail

TRUMBULL — The state's Department of Transportation has no plans to install a guardrail at the site of a fatal Route 8 crash in Trumbull where a driver veered off the highway and struck the abutment of an overpass April 10.

DOT spokesperson Samaia Hernandez said the site of the crash wouldn't warrant additional safety infrastructure, citing Connecticut's highway manual, which recommends a 30-foot “clear zone” for vehicles to recover if they leave the roadway. She said the highway median where the crash occurred is wide and flat enough for drivers to recover if they run off the road.

State police said the vehicle drifted across both of the southbound lanes on Route 8 before entering the grassy median and striking the support column of the White Plains Road overpass near Exit 7. The van “became fully engulfed in flames,” and the driver died at the scene, police said.

Photos from the scene show no guardrails installed between the traffic lanes and the flat, grassy median with the concrete abutment. The location is part of a stretch spanning roughly half a mile without “safety hardware” along the highway median on the southbound and northbound sides of Route 8, according to a map from the University of Connecticut and civil engineering firm VHB. The map shows multiple other stretches on both sides of Route 8 that lack hardware along the median, seemingly due to its similar dimensions.

Guardrails are the second most common object that drivers strike in crashes along Route 8, behind other motor vehicles, but have a lower rate of fatalities than some other structures that could stand beyond them, according to data from UConn's Connecticut Transportation Institute.

The data shows that roughly 0.7 percent of guardrail collisions result in fatalities, with 15 deaths in 2,058 incidents since 2015. This compares favorably to other obstacles like trees, with 13 fatalities in 139 incidents, a 9.3-percent fatality rate. The study reported no fatalities in nine incidents of vehicles striking bridge supports in the same period.

The Connecticut Highway Design Manual states the 30-foot clear zone, which refers to the open space between the roadway and potential collision hazards, should allow 80 to 85 percent of drivers to recover in the case of 60-mile-per-hour speeds and flat slopes. Posted speed limits along Route 8 in Trumbull hover between 35 and 55 miles per hour, according to state records.

The state standard mirrors that of the Federal Highway Administration, which recommends clear zones between 30 and 32 feet wide for areas of flat terrain with 60-mile-per-hour speeds. The manual states highway designers should not use the clear zone as a boundary for hazards like bridge piers, sign supports or utility poles, urging them to place those structures “as far from the roadway as practical.”

“At locations where roadside hazards must be placed along the highway, at a minimum they should be placed at the clear zone boundary and possibly shielded,” the manual reads.