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VDOT plans safety upgrades Date published: 5/20/2009
BY DONNIE JOHNSTON
The Virginia Department of Transportation last night announced that it will make nearly $300,000 worth of safety improvements to a curve on State Route 3 in Culpeper that has claimed six lives in the past six years. Most of the improvements will be visual, according to VDOT's Northwest Regional Operations Director Dean Gustafson, and won't involve any actual realignment because engineers contend that the curve was built to safely handle traffic going 60 mph. The problem, Gustafson told Route 3 residents who attended a public hearing, is that too many motorists are traveling well past the posted 55-mph speed limit. According to a recent study, 85 percent of traffic is traveling at speeds as high as 64 mph, which has contributed in many cases to the 14 crashes (four fatal with six deaths) that have occurred in an 1,100-foot stretch since 2003. To slow motorists down, VDOT plans to make signs larger, post a 50-mph "advisory" speed limit, add centerline pavement markers, install wider tape markings along the curve and upgrade markings to a more reflective epoxy. The highway department will also install rumble strips at either end of the curve to get the driver's attention and widen shoulders or add them where they barely exist now. Adding extra shoulder width will also allow VDOT to widen each lane from 11 feet--the standard when the road was built in the 1940s--to 12 feet, which is standard now. That 11-foot lane width and narrow shoulders were said to be the curve's only possible design flaws. "When a motorist makes an error, there is very little chance for him to correct," Vijay Kulkarni, VDOT's Northwest Region assistant regional traffic engineer, told the audience. The curve is near the middle of the only remaining two-lane stretch of Route 3--about 4.3 miles--between Culpeper and Fredericksburg. Located about a half-mile east of Stevensburg, area residents--and VDOT officials--remain somewhat confounded as to why it is the scene of so many crashes. "When I moved there in the 1970s, everyone said you're moving to that bad curve," said Joanne Russell, whose home is just west of State Route 739. "I said, 'That is not a bad curve' but for some reason it is a bad curve." Kulkarni agreed that the highway meets all VDOT standards. "Motorists are just not tracking the curve," he said.
the road is going to be widened ASAP to 4 lanes on the only stretch of Rt. 3 west of Fredericksburg that is still 2 lanes. It's a waste of $300K that should be put into the funds for the widening project. VDOT was planning on doing it sooner but the state cut the budget so badly this project got put off. Last I heard some money had been found, why not add this little bit to it?
And, for those of you who say this is a driver’s responsibility please remember, most of the time a drunk driver kills a family/family member and he/she walks away with minor injuries. So even if you are cruising along at the correct speed, the other guy might not be. This is how it becomes a "you" issue, not a someone else issue.
Where I agree this is a driver issue, VDOT is following the three E's in its approach. Education, Enforcement, and Engineering. Engineering is ruled out because of standards and cost. Enforcement is difficult at best, can we really afford to put a trooper there (state issue, not county) 24 hours a day, and there is no guarantee the trooper could be 100% effective at stopping accidents. So education (signs and warnings) is all they have available at the moment.
that stretch of road nearly every Friday evening and sometimes during the weekdays and never seem to have an issue. If you take the curve at a decent speed it's not really an issue. Even if you take it a little fast, it's not an issue. Granted, it's sad that 6 people have died on that stretch of road, but I really think it's the idiot drivers out there that make it a bad spot for accidents. Any curve can be hazardous if no one pays attention to the road.
A common sense solution would be to lower the speed limit and enforce it instead of dumping $300K into a curve during a budget crisis. People die in car accidents because of idiot drivers. This is a band aid.
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