I imagine the police are not allowed to comment on road design as a factor in collisions, for various reasons.
Oh I am sure there are but the main point so far was that they are to low and cars are jumping the median\barricades and ending up on the other side. So to fix this they should be higher.
I think if some thought was put into this that a better design could be brought forward but the main dispute in this thread is that they are not tall enough. I personally think that a reverse shaped barrier would help, sort of an upside down triangle. This stops the ramp effect and keeps the vehicles on their side. Granted I did not put a lot of thought into this and I am not an engineer but just my thought.
The key in all of this is an engineered solution. The first step is to determine whether this was just bad luck or something where the risk level is too high. If this particular location of road has similar risk as the rest of our road system nothing should be done. If this is a higher risk area than fixing it makes sense.
But we have this type of barrier on Deerfoot Crowchild and other express ways so a wholesale change would be very expensive. So then you need to ask is it worth the cost to save fractions of lives each year. Or is there other areas that the money could be spent that would be more effective.
To me these incidents appear random and it is the law of large numbers that we have to similar incidents in a similar location rather than a systematic flaw in this particular location. Hopefully an engineering review will address it.
Make the walls 10' tall and get rid of rubberneckers while we're at it! It'll be like driving around in East Berlin!
I know that you're half joking, but you actually make a good point. In Italy, for example, they have steel barriers on many of the the major highways that are quite high. While I'm sure that this helps keep larger vehicles from crossing over, it also prevents people in most average and smaller cars from seeing the traffic on the other side.
While I understand that this situation wasn't the result of rubbernecking, we all know how much a single police car on the opposite side of road can have an impact on traffic and can even cause rubbernecking-related accidents.
And specifically about this accident : I know that people need to take responsibility for their own driving, but a barrier of any height is there for the sole purpose of preventing someone's mistake from being serious. If people didn't screw up, we'd have a simple yellow line there.
Driver error is a major factor (as it usually is), but the snow build-up and/or barrier height cant be ignored.
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^ seems like a real stretch to me as to get your vehicle airborne you need to steer out of your lane........also how do you prove the mounds did not happen from regular vehicular traffic pushing the snow off to the side?
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slow the #### down too...I can't believe how people drive in this city.
"oh I have a big 4x4 truck so icy roads don't matter"
not saying the road is perfect either but it drives my crazy how people risk their own lives and more importantly the lives of others so they can get to tim horton's 2 mins earlier or whatever meaningless thing they are doing
Last edited by dino7c; 02-10-2014 at 01:01 PM.
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^ One of my "signs its winter" is to see a pickup truck high centred on that very centre median. Almost always a pickup truck, and almost always because dude thought his 4x4 and winter tires would let him do 100 in an area where others are going <70 because of poor road conditions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Northendzone
^ seems like a real stretch to me as to get your vehicle airborne you need to steer out of your lane........also how do you prove the mounds did not happen from regular vehicular traffic pushing the snow off to the side?
To that latter question, I think the "reasonable person" would easily believe such snow banks are caused by plows pushing the snow around. It would be a moot question anyway since how the snow gets there isn't as important as the fact that the city is improperly clearing it.
slow the #### down too...I can't believe how people drive in this city.
"oh I have a big 4x4 truck so icy roads don't matter"
not saying the road is perfect either but it drives my crazy how people risk their own lives and more importantly the lives of others so they can get to tim horton's 2 mins earlier or whatever meaningless thing they are doing
Totally agree but I don't think targeting trucks helps. Lots of dummies, in all vehicles.
It's crazy how socially acceptable speeding is. Bring on the self driving cars.
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I drove by this crash yesterday on the way to Chinook. A bunch of the emergency vehicles were on the west bound side of the median.
This is because 5 ambulances and 4 fire engines were sent to this MVC. They were sent from multiple directions.
On another note, the Calgary Herald said that CPS believe alchohol may have been a factor for the driver of the truck.
This is because 5 ambulances and 4 fire engines were sent to this MVC. They were sent from multiple directions.
On another note, the Calgary Herald said that CPS believe alchohol may have been a factor for the driver of the truck.
On the radio they said the cops didn't believe alchohol was a factor in the crash.
I just found out that I knew the person that was killed in this accident. I worked with her on a few occasions as my work is very close with L'Arche Calgary. She was a great lady.
Location: Close enough to make a beer run during a TV timeout
Exp:
This is what your snip says:
Quote:
Earlier, a man and woman were taken to hospital with serious injuries after their vehicle crashed into a tree in east Calgary.
While road conditions are believed to be a factor, police suspect alcohol may have also been involved, Nichol said.
Police officers, paramedics and fire crews were called to 36th Street and 8th Avenue S.E. shortly after 5 a.m. when a vehicle drove off the road into a tree.
For the Glenmore crash, it says:
Quote:
On Saturday, police said road conditions were slippery at the time of the latest collision and that speed may have been a contributing factor. Alcohol has been ruled out.
The trajectory or a vehicle leaving the roadway is significantly different when a curb and gutter system is in place. Unfortunately with a narrow median and an old design standard, it's pretty difficult to get around a curb and gutter there for drainage purposes.
These days, I imagine they wouldn't install curb and gutter there for the median and just continuous-pour an F-Shape barrier with a drain system underneath, similar to Glenmore between 14th Street and Crowchild's setup. I'm guessing that would be the best solution to the issue, but with a possible interchange upgrade happening very soon at Deerfoot Trail which will affect the approach on Glenmore, widescale changes to this stretch are probably unlikely.
You could move the existing barrier closer to the curb to prevent people from going over, but then you'll get lots of vehicles flipping over when they hit the barrier instead.
That stretch of Glenmore gets tons of accidents during the summer months too. It's just too crowded for the volumes, and the people slowing down quickly because of the Deerfoot exit are usually the reason we keep seeing this on EB Glenmore and not WB.
That stretch of Glenmore is so confusing right now, I am not exactly surprised about all this stuff happening. With the Blackfoot bridge under construction there are signs posted that the speed limit is only 60 in that area, but I hardly ever see people slow down there and when I do I always have someone on my bumper.
I understand moreso if there were actually workers under the bridge on Glenmore most days, but since there is hardly ever anyone there I don't get it.
