Update--June 11 2006--Repaint!
The lines on I-90 are now nicely painted (this is heading west with Kachess Lake on the left on June 11, 2006), so the facts below on this web-page about the painted lines on I-90 are no longer current. As the next picture shows, squalls are common on the crest, and when they come, it sure helps to have the lines:
This is certainly a welcome change, but the commentary below is still relevant in many ways, and the situation that did and still partially does exist points to a persistent mindset at the DoT: safety is seen mainly as arriving with new concrete, rather than with simple, cheap and quickly-achieved interventions in driver behavior.
I-90 safety and what it reveals about our DoT
Whenever the DoT is trying to get taxpayers to fund major paving projects, or fight off initiatives that would leave it with less money, safety is trotted around like a show-pony. But when something obvious & inexpensive could be done right away to improve safety--like lowering the overall speed limit or creating variable condition-appropriate speed limits on a dangerous stretch of road, the DoT in this example hasn't done so.
This is the way a highway should look, with white lane lines. This is I-90 heading west after leaving Ellensberg, just a little before Easton.
Immediately after Easton, the right-hand-lane paint, and often all the paint, disappears. No doubt it's been worn off by fearful motorists hugging the right shoulder at night. The lanes traveling East are just as bad.
The trouble with having no lane lines here is that this is the road over the Cascades, where rain, snow, sleet and squalls are common. These photos were taken in daytime, but at night with rain or snow driving horizontally into the driver's windshield, the lack of any guidance from painted lines is dangerous.
The van is merging. Which lane is it in now?
Which lane is the white car in? These are easy questions. This is daytime and the precip really isn't serious..
Among other things, the sign at the rest station at Snoqualmie Pass by the Washington State Dept. of Transportation says that "the accident rate on Snoqualmie Pass is double the rate of similar interstate routes." The sign goes on to extol the virtues of a $387.7 million dollar repaving project that is getting underway. which it says will improve public safety..
Now here's what's odd about all this. The speed limit over the crest is varyingly 65 or 70. By contrast, the speed limit on I-90 between Issaquah and Seattle, where there is a good road, good lane lines, and Bot's Dots, is 60. Speed, contrary to popular opinion, is a major determinant of traffic safety, in, of course, an inverse relationship. Studies show that increases in traffic speed increase fatality by the power of 4 (in other words take the higher speed, divide by the lower speed, and raise the resulting fraction to the fourth power to get the increased rate of danger).
Lowering the speed limit on the I-90 over the Cascades would be the cheapest project the DoT ever did. Even the installation of electronic speed limit signs that could vary according to day/night and specific weather conditions (There are a already a few on I-90) would be much cheaper than any type of road construction project.
DoT's use of the word "accident"
The DoT's use of the word "accident" (see above) when discussing car crashes is a poor choice. In his 2004 Book Traffic Safety, Dr. Leonard Evans discusses the term this way:
"The widely used term accident is considered unsuitable for technical use. Accident conveys a sense that the losses are due exclusively to fate. Perhaps this is what gives accident its most potent appeal--the sense that it exonerates participants from responsibility."
I might add that in the case of I-90, the DoT may need the feeling of exoneration as well as the participants.
image from the DoT's I-90 sign
Some traffic safety facts
Also from Traffic Safety, by Dr. Leonard Evans
More than 40,000 people are killed on the roads in the United states each year
Over 4 and half times as many Americans have been killed in traffic accidents as have been killed in all wars the United States has been involved in, beginning with 1775.
No one was killed on a scheduled airline flight in 2002.
In 2002 an average of 16.3 U.S. teenagers were killed each day in traffic
A study of race drivers (SCCA drivers) showed higher than average crash rates.
There has never been a technical study of traffic risk on German Autobahns!
Drunks and babies both have a much higher risk of being killed in a given crash than sober people or adults respectively, (despite a popular adage to the contrary)
When the 55 mph national speed limit was imposed in the U.S. in 1974 it resulted in an estimated average drop in traffic speed of 5.8 mph which likely accounted for an estimated drop in the fatality-rate-per-mile-driven of 32%, saving thousands of lives
The average 20 year old male driver imposes 62% more risk of harm to others than the average 80 year old male driver (Keep in mind that everyone hassles 80- year olds to hang up their driver's licenses)
Young male drivers have the highest fatality and crash rates, and pose the greatest threats to other road users.
On average, increasing speed 10 above a 55 mph speed limit brings the same risk to a motorist as going from 0 to .08% blood alchohol
About 850 people per year are killed by drivers who run red lights
Middle-aged women are the safest drivers by per-mile measure.
The U.S., which led all nations in traffic safety in the 50s & 60s, has fallen to 16th place in the world, even if measured by fatalities per mile driven.
All photos on this page (below the update) taken March 26, 2006