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Guardrails present new danger
(by Dave Lange - December 14, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Guardrails present new danger
I've been driving on the Route 422 freeway between Interstate 271 and progressively more distant points east from the time it opened as the Harper Road Extension. The limited-access highway was under construction when I lived in Bedford Heights and began working in Solon and Chagrin Falls in 1976.
After moving to Garfield Heights, I passed the confluence of Interstates 271 and 480 and what then was known as Alternate Route 422 each day on my way to jobs in Painesville and Chardon. Exposed to wicked wind-swept snows at a high elevation in eastern Cuyahoga County, that interchange may be the hairiest winter driving spot in all of Ohio.
Living in Bainbridge in the mid-1980s and working in Cleveland, I became even more familiar with winter drives on Alternate Route 422. I was working in Chagrin Falls when the highway was extended to Bainbridge in 1991 and then to Auburn a couple years later. I remember when the "Alternate" was dropped and the old Route 422 along Chagrin Boulevard and East Washington Street was abandoned by the state.
I've broken down on Route 422 and been rescued by Solon police. My wife's car was rear-ended at the Chillicothe Road (Route 306) exit ramp in Bainbridge, where inadequate stacking capacity still dangerously backs up motorists onto the highway.
I've narrowly avoided a few accidents myself on Route 422. Last winter, a driver sped by me and promptly spun out on the icy road in front of my vehicle. I thought a collision was inevitable. But, after a couple spins, his car slid off the pavement and safely stopped with little or no damage whatsoever in the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes.
That would not happen this winter. This summer, at a cost of $1 million, the Ohio Department of Transportation erected guardrails within a couple feet of the highway shoulder to block errant vehicles from sliding into the median and even prevent disabled ones from fully pulling off the roadway.
If it had been in place last winter, the out-of-control driver in front of me would have slammed into the guardrail and banked back onto the highway, where I almost certainly would have crashed into him, causing unknown damages and perhaps serious injuries.
The reason the new guardrails were installed is that Solon officials appealed for ODOT to take action after a 2004 fatal crossover accident in which an out-of-control vehicle crossed the median and collided with another one traveling in the opposite direction. After a similar accident in 2010 resulted in injuries but no fatalities, ODOT agreed to put up the guardrails but not the three-wire barrier system requested by the city.
Then three weeks ago, Jason P. Kasmer, 28, of Solon, was killed when his car hit that new guardrail.
We don't know for certain what would have happened to young Mr. Kasmer if the new guardrail had not been installed. We also don't know for certain what would have happened in 2004 if the guardrail had been installed at that time. I do know that I avoided an accident last winter when the car in front of me slid into the median instead of a guardrail.
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