SUDDEN IMPACT2 - DARWINIAN HIGHWAY ENGINEERING IN NEO

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 15:55.

east 55 at interstate 490 east exit highway crashes engineering calousness

Your daughter has been up all night for college finals and drives home at midnight from Kent. Your elderly parents come to visit from Detroit and are bleary eyed as they get to Cleveland.   You went to Independance for a Friday after work happy hour and stayed 'til one AM.

The rumble strip noise means something (dhuuhh), but at 65 MPH it takes you a moment to compute....

SUDDEN IMPACT! 

Welcome to NEO where we  are avid practitioners of Darwinian Highway Engineering Development (DHED).

The scrap yard behind the wood fence is the ultimate receiver of vehicles which don't make the hard left or right onto E 55th.    The steel pole in the center of the photo has been struck countless times (it's shiny!) - to the point that the highway traffic signal arm has been removed from it and placed - with a longer horizontal arm (see photo composit above - top half of image has been shifted left - black headless pole behind fence on left is actually top of bottom pole in center of photo - sorry it's a little confused) on a new highway signal pole off to the right hand side.

This is what it looks like at night - the sudden impact steel pole can be seen between the two cars..

east 55 and I490 exit at night cleveland ohio

So the highway department knows this is a deadly crash site - they moved the traffic lights - but they don't have the human decency to put in flashing warning lights, reflectors, energy absorbing crash barriers....

Instead they let you hit the pole, or if you are lucky, go into the block wall and bushes before you end up in the SCRAP YARD.

DHED. 

The way to go in OHIO!  Even Toby Cosgrove would see an Opportunity to improve things here...

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