ON THE ROAD
America's highways are not exactly the safest place to be.
In many areas we have an enviable system of roads and they have been improved steadily over the years at great expense to local,state and federal governments.
Highways age rather quickly, however. At their best they are, as a rule, more of less inadequate on the day they are completed, because the world around them changes sharply, in part do to their presence, and also because the politics of road-building can often be a tedious, drawn-out process. It is this aging process which makes them a constantly increasing danger to all they serve.
This past weekend we drove from mid-Virginia to mid-North Carolina in about four four hours of actual travel time. We were on Interstate routes almost all of the time. That would be I-81, I-77 and I-40
Having travel their predecessors many times, I think of each of them as being exceptionally good highways. They each carry larger numbers of cars and trucks than they were designed to serve, and they are remarkably safe and one travels them in comfort and some assurance of safety. comfort witht with court and assurance .
On our week end trip saw two accidents. One occurred on I-77 north of Statesville, North Carolina. A “Toyota” pick-up with extended cab and a black tarp covering the cargo bed, veered from the highway suddenly and turned over several times and came to a crumpled stop on the median strip. Only the driver was seriously injured. He was air-lifted by helicopter he to the hospital. hpitl .His neck was neck was b broken. His mother, in the passenger seat beside him and three people in the rear seat were all were taken by ambulance to area hospitals. They suffered only minor injuries. Reports have it that the driver attempted to avoid striking a van ahead which was changing lanes;. He is thought to have over adjusted and the car wheels dug into the edge of the road and the vehicle flipped.
The other accident involved at least two motorcycles. We had found biker to be out in great numbers because it was the first sunny weekend we have e experienced months. We passed many such groups time and again, and rarely riding in side-by-side twosomes, but that must have been what caused two of them to touch and become a tangled mass in the grassy slope of I-77 near Fancy Gap, Virginia. I have not found any media reports on that crash so it may not have been as severe as it appeared to have been. We were part of the miles-long jam in back of it all and we were urged by the site quickly once we worked our way up to it.
The whole trip for us was, I'd say, a safe one. Drivers of both cars and trucks, I think, stayed reasonably close to set speed limits – seventy m.p.h. on I-77...for about a 75 average forward thrust for traffic in general. Considering the traffic, handled it is remarkable safe system.
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State police were evident in both states throughout the entire trip. That, beyond any doubt, is a strong deterrent to excessive speeds and careless driving. Theirs is no easy task. The highways are being used heavily; they are crowded and some are operating well beyond the intended capacity.
I-81 is in the process of being updated temporarily by the addition or more lanes. That will help for a only a few years after the project is completed. An additional north-south intestate is going to be urgently needed rather than such make-do adjustments.
A.L.M. June 25, 2003 [c649wds]
