BOOBYTRAP!

[Music] [Music] [Music] a modern highway built to strict safety standards with all the latest life-saving technology or is it tens of thousands of new expressway miles like this one have been open to traffic in recent years interstate expressways turnpike state highways just how safe are these so-called modern roads and how safe are millions of miles of older highways the answer is in your morning newspaper in the stories and photos of adults and children destroyed or maimed for life and crashes into any one of the host of hazards that routinely needlessly line the sides of our highways i'm ben kelly for the insurance institute for highway safety i want you to join me for an uncommon look at an all too common part of your environment the mess of booby traps that has turned the sides of our roads into instruments of death and injury for thousands of car occupants each year you and i see these roadsides every day but not the way we'll see them for the next few minutes the bridge piers and signposts the trees and rocks you need stray from the road only a foot or so for only a moment or so to risk running into any one of a number of lethal hazards of course if cars never left the road there'd be no problem but they do all the time for all sorts of reasons what about people in cars that veer off the road because the road itself was poorly designed skidding in wet weather for instance these films were shot in everyday traffic near washington dc by a congressional staff team investigating highway design that actually encourages skidding commonplace skids like these whether caused by roads or drivers can bring cruel and unusual punishment to occupants when their vehicles are hurtled into roadside death traps even before their drivers have a chance to regain control have you ever been thrown into confusion along an unfamiliar expressway by misleading signs or a poorly placed exit ramp these are interstate highway segments where the same congressional investigators gathered filmed evidence of erratic driving caused by poor signs and poor ramp design a moment before they came into camera range the drivers of these cars and trucks were confronted by confusing signs that caused their harrowing near misses this kind of forced indecision can also take cars and their occupants right into one of the many unforgiving obstacles that line the roadsides how about the mother whose car veered off the road when she turned to look at her crying child in the back seat or the man who lost control of his car when his faulty engine mounts broke or a tire blew and what about the people forced off the road by drunks or incompetent drivers do they really deserve death or a lifetime in a wheelchair some public health people are starting to recognize the roadside booby trap menace for what it really is a widespread environmental crisis and they're aggressively seeking and promoting effective ways to combat it one of these is susan p baker as a member of the faculty of the johns hopkins school of hygiene and public health working in the office of the chief medical examiner of the state of maryland she's long been concerned by this problem highway injuries are the same kind of public health problem that polio or impure water or anything else is except that they're bigger than most public health problems if we need pure water for people to drink we don't depend upon the housewife to boil her own water we purify the water for a whole community because this is the only way of being sure that that community is going to be safe why then don't we remove the hazards from the sides of the roads instead of trying to educate each person not to hit those polls because we can't educate the people not to hit them what are they going to do when their car loses a wheel or when some drunk comes and sideswipes them think of in terms of some educational program in which they learn they should avoid polls along the sides of the highways when you see these kids and these older folks who come in from the highways who end up in the city morgue you're looking at perhaps two kids who were killed when their car hit a tree that had been planted there you're looking at folks whose car was split by the end of a guardrail that wasn't buried you may see a driver whose brakes failed when he was going downhill into a dead end intersection and there was a gas and electric pole right in the middle of his path and he got killed but in all the thousands of cases we've had in the morgue i have yet to see or hear of any case where a person was killed simply because his car went out of control and came to rest on a bare shoulder of course most roadsides are far from bare driving along today's highways you literally run a gauntlet of hazards that have been left there or placed there by design exposed concrete bridge piers and bridge railings steep embankments ditches and drop-offs rigid steel signposts unyielding light poles telephone and utility poles the spear-like ends of guard rails look familiar it should because it's simply a replica of the environment we drive through and take for granted every day in fact it's a replica of this busy interchange on a major urban expressway right here we're surrounded by the death traps we just saw on the model the concrete bridge pier the embankment how'd you like to hit these rocks at 60 miles an hour the ditches and drop off the rigid steel sign post the unyielding light pole anchored in concrete the telephone pole as usual just inches off the pavement the guard rail with an end like this can spear right through your car and you if you stray only a few feet off the road if your car misses this exit here it may end up in this gore area here demolished by one of these signposts here in this gore area just across the highway there's a signpost and a snub-nosed guard rail either design could destroy your car and you look around the roads you travel you'll see these booby traps and others as well stray boulders at the road's edge or in the median jagged rock cuts waiting to snag your car like this one where one person has already been killed decorative rock walls so popular on parkways trees left or planted right beside the road storm sewers and culverts we've taken these menaces for granted for such a long time dr william hadden jr is president of the insurance institute for highway safety these traps along the side of the road are one of the many everyday modern man-made environmental messes that are damaging people they damage people in ways that in the final result are just as serious as the combustion products that go into the lungs whether from smoking or or from somebody's smokestack or the the industrial chemicals that are also man-made and allowed to be present or even put in the environment it's just a tragedy that people don't yet understand this enough to bring the bear the governmental and private uh the marketplace pressures to stop this needless environmental contamination with hazards very regularly spaced where they do this kind of damage to people are there ways to avoid contaminating the size of new highways and what about decontaminating the millions of miles of roads whose sides already are infested with booby traps the technological answers have been available for years they're economical easy to implement easy to maintain and most important they prevent damage to people take rigid light poles and signposts which are common roadside killers they wouldn't be if they were set back a safe distance from the side of the pavement or placed on the facing of bridge overpasses for those situations where poles or posts have to be located near the edge of the road breakaway designs that don't kill or maim have been well known for years breakaway polls such as the ones being tested here are starting to be used in some states during one year breakaway polls installed along selected sections of interstate highway in louisiana were hit 16 times at more than 60 miles an hour no one was killed yet most of the light poles and signposts you see along the highway are not built to break away like this in a crash they're built to stand fast and they kill research is also finding ways to modify the millions of unyielding telephone and utility poles already planted along the edges of streets and highways so that they'll give when they're hit as in this simulated 20 mile an hour crash what about guardrails does it always really protect you not if it's guardrail that doesn't need to be there when guardrail separates you from a clear roadside recovery area it's an obstacle not a protector a guardrail is justified only when it keeps your car from hitting a worse hazard incidentally take a look at this a car hitting the guardrail here might well be guided into the bridge railing here now had the guardrail been brought forward and fastened to the side of the bridge there'd be far less danger that your car would come to a destructive stop pocketed between bridge and guard rail this same sort of design hostile to life and limb is commonplace also on bridge abutments and support pillars where you have to use guardrail it's important that it do its job it should not bounce you back across traffic like this it should slow your car to a safe stop guardrail needn't let vehicles crash through into greater hazards even heavier vehicles like buses and trucks guard rail like this protectively absorbs the energy of crashes by cushioning the vehicle when it's hit in other tighter places alongside a bridge for instance or at a rock cut or in a narrow median strip this kind of contoured concrete barrier does an impressive job of deflecting the car away from the hazard and back along the road british researchers are testing what they call the dragon curb sections of tubing that hold a straying car on course on the shoulder of the road and keep it out of a crash the end of the guard rail is itself a death trap if it isn't humanely designed instead of being aimed at you like a spear it can help slow a crashing vehicle to a safe stop if it is properly flared and anchored if your car misses the exit the gore area could offer you a chance of recovery if it's free of booby traps this sign which we saw out on the highway a few moments ago could have been made to break away in a crash if the gore area can't be cleared of all hazards bridge railings for instance or toll booths easy to install cushioning systems are available to slow crashing vehicles to a gentle stop so their human contents won't be destroyed carefully arrange systems of empty oil drums for instance this is a test crash and this is a real crash filmed automatically on a texas highway at moment of impact the driver was able to drive away from the high-speed crash that otherwise could have killed him canisters of sand can also do the job installations like this have been crashed into scores of times at speeds up to 75 miles an hour without a single known fatality this system uses cells filled with water to slow your car another readily available system of cells is made of a dry crushable substance crash cushions like these are already in use on the golden gate bridge the new york state thruway and other urban and rural roads where they're saving lives simply by providing the few needed seconds and the few needed feet of energy absorbing material to slow the crashing vehicle in a way that dissipates the crash forces so that they don't seriously damage the occupants this is interstate 95 between washington dc and baltimore maryland one of the newest stretches of interstate highway open to traffic its shoulders are clear of hazards its signs are set away from the edge of the road sometimes on bridge overpasses its lights and other fixtures that must be near the edge of the road are on breakaway supports its bridge beers are set far back from the travel right-of-way the federal highway administration says that you can stray off a road like this one at speeds up to 50 miles an hour without serious damage but a federal highway official has warned that if you stray off most other streets or roads at speeds of more than just 12 miles an hour you're all too likely to crash into a needless hazard along the edge with serious damage you know one of the worst examples we know of is closest to the washington locations where the decisions are made that leave these things along our roads and that are killing so many people right over by the national airport which is a government-owned facility under total government control you don't need any permission to make changes we have streams of cars coming and going on the access road and right next to the road about every 100 feet or so are great big solid barrels of concrete and right out of the middle of them comes a pole and any car that strays off of the side of that for whatever reason is going to get decelerated so rapidly that the people inside are going to be badly mutilated or killed and yet about a thousand feet away we have one of the busiest airports in the country with runways along which we would not put such structures to kill and name and destroy the vehicles in that case aircraft hitting them and yet the landing speeds are quite similar in many cases and on many parts of the runway we have sense enough to do this for airports when are we going to have sense enough to stop killing people along the sides of our roads by putting these booby traps there that result in the same kind of damage as if the plane crashed into a pole right off the edge of the runway it's essential that people understand this and bring the pressure to bear to get these messes cleaned up because they were put there by man they can be taken away by men and we can have a lot less blood all over our vehicles on the highways and along them also if the roadside booby trap problem isn't yet solved perhaps the single most important missing element is public insistence sufficient demand by people who will not settle for roadside environments that are literally stacked against them one man who's been unwilling to put up with roadside hazards is a new york television repairman joe linko is out in his service truck nearly every day so he sees the problem first hand well what happened is uh we had a concrete stanchion on the shoulder on the cross bronx expressway and the sign that it used to protect was gone so i wanted to remove that concrete extension so i told the city highway department i told the state highway department and they failed to act so then i got a camera and i went out there and started taking pictures of these things then and only then did i discover that this was only a small hazard there was death traps all around us the more pitches i took the more serious things i saw well that's way back around seven or eight years ago say and uh at that time we were starting to build a brand new interstate highway see him they would have listened to me at that time we could have saved millions and millions of dollars not building these dead traps to begin with but because i was just an ordinary citizen they just thought that i was uh someone was just making noises there and because of that we have all these stuff trapped needlessly joe lincoln took hundreds more pictures of booby traps and in 1967 he showed them at a congressional investigative hearing congressman john blatnick of minnesota now chairman of the house public works committee was presiding and we found that there were severe needless accidents being repeated there was a high frequency of accidents in certain places of the most modern highway design in the whole world and the first reports were well that's just a peculiar it's a free somebody's so-called goofed it's an error they will correct it but we were curious to made a random check of each of the nine major highway regions throughout the united states which are administered by the then bureau of roads now the federal highway administration and we found the identical errors and we asked them to pick the highway stretch you take us to your latest most up-to-date system just completed the stretch of highway of interstate just completed just open or about to be opened and in each project in each one of the nine regions the same the same miscalculations and errors and design construction occurred by the way we had a case in ohio where the great big tree was being get banged continuously and the highway safety people said that trees got to be cut down but they didn't have the jurisdiction to to direct this removal it had to come in the department of agriculture now they never talk to each other so we found this type of again lack of communication between two different departments one day the ohio engineers to their great pleasure found the treatment cut down they one of their cures want to find out who ordered it and the department of in of agriculture ordered creepy could be cut down because it had dutch elm disease not because it was a highway hazard since congressman block makes hearings others have started pushing to get roadsides diffused the federation of insurance council is an association of attorneys representing insurance companies companies that is who may have to pay out when a booby trap kills names or destroys property andrew rico is general counsel for the insurance institute for highway safety and he's also a member of the federation's highway safety committee which is campaigning against the roadside hazard uh it's a come to him why does he now have to have this suit in which the plaintiff or his defendant companies representing they're sitting there because a utility pole happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they've asked questions why should it be there they also became concerned when they some of the company attorneys found out that after they were paying for these polls it ended up the company utility company be it or the highway department we're putting the polls up in the same place and probably stronger so that the next time somebody hit it the damages would instead of having a case for injuries it would be a death claim as a result the federation of insurance council is distributing a booklet that tells how to monitor roadsides and report booby traps to highway authorities in the press the problem isn't limited to the united states these pictures were taken by a team of young activists from the canada council of young drivers using donated film they crisscrossed the continent for a year taking pictures and calling the attention of the press and highway officials to the menace posed by canada's roadside death traps researchers from the university of vermont went through their state inventorying and photographing its roadside hazards one of the vermont researchers was dr julian waller vermont calls itself the beckoning country because of its beauty but we found that another thing was beckoning that all of these roadside obstacles were beckoning [Music] we got pictures from as long ago as 15 or 20 years ago and we found many many instances in which fatal crashes involve some sort of an obstacle some of these obstacles are trees poles embankments and culverts rock ledges bridges and various other things we found that this had been going on in the past we looked at what was going on in the present things hadn't changed a jot people were still crashing into one obstacle after another and in fact of the 150 people who died in vermont in 1969 of highway crashes 50 of them died because they hit obstacles that shouldn't have been there the general accounting office which monitors federal spending for congress has pointed out in this report and i quote the cost effectiveness of highway safety improvement work in terms of lives saved was shown to be about five times greater than that of regular highway construction work yet the agency's investigators found that states are spending about 49 federal highway dollars on highway construction for every dollar they spend on safety oriented improvements they urge that more highway funds be directed toward getting rid of booby traps one interchange a single example of a deadly problem that reaches everywhere people travel on roadways it's a problem that grows even larger with the building of every new mile of highway whose roadside design is indifferent to people future highways don't need to be designed and built this way nor do millions of miles of existing roads need to remain infested with roadside booby traps but until a system of roadside safety standards is forcefully injected into the design construction and maintenance of highways the problem won't be solved henry h lakeland is director of the office of surface transportation of the national transportation safety board the federal agency charged with watchdogging government's role in upgrading the safety of our national transportation systems if the automobile manufacturer makes a product which has a defect the he must report the defect when he finds it to those who have purchased the car so that they can make some sort of a repair of it but what happens in the highway field it's not like that at all there's no one who who can who can like the police officer ride down a highway identify all of the defects and require that something be done about them in effect we do not have anyone who blows the whistle on the highway department which doesn't use the newest methods for the past few minutes we've taken a close look at the deadliness of america's roadside environment perhaps it's changed the way you'll look from now on at the sides of the roads you travel but one thing hasn't changed in these few minutes the enormity of the problem itself the hazards are still out here lying in weight along millions of miles of expressway highway street road so next time you read in your morning newspaper about a roadside death or injury think to ask why the guard rail wasn't strong enough or who put the rigid pole or post where it could and did kill or who failed to shield the ditch or bridge abutment think to ask why the sides of our roads remain so littered with so many of these hazards that kill and maim and next time you're out here watch for the booby traps when you see them remember they'll stay here killing and maiming only as long as the public tolerates them and no longer [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so i