Inside Report for April 23, 2008

• By JARED JANES
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 23, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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One approach isn’t enough to lower the traffic fatality rate in Louisiana that ranks among the nation’s worst. But some hope three might work.

Engineering. Enforcement. Education.

The three E’s — as dubbed by Louisiana State Police spokesman Lt. Doug Cain — may be the best hope for the state to reduce traffic fatalities.

A road engineered for safety won’t be altogether safe if there are not enough officers to enforce traffic laws. A boundless number of traffic officers can’t stop accidents on poorly designed highways.

And even the best combination of the two won’t lower the number of traffic fatalities if drivers don’t take seriously the perils of drunken driving and the necessity of seat belts.

The difficulty, it seems, is finding the best combination of the three.

For instance, if a highway median barrier had been in place on Interstate 10 near LaPlace, it might have prevented the death of an 8-year-old Baton Rouge girl and injuries of 10 other people on March 16, when a man accused of drunken driving crossed the median and crashed into oncoming cars.

In an effort to avoid such cross-over accidents, the state Department of Transportation and Development will open bids next month to add steel-cable barriers along a 32.6-mile stretch of I-10 in St. Tammany Parish where a number of cross-over accidents have been recorded, agency spokesman Mark Lambert said. Assuming the cost of $6.7 million for the project is consistent, it means the state could line barriers up on the entire 1,000 miles of interstate highways in Louisiana for about $200 million.

That’s about 10 times DOTD’s annual budget for safety improvements, Lambert said. It’s also about what it would cost to widen Interstate 12 from Baton Rouge across much of Livingston Parish.

Cross-over accidents usually are caused by bad driver behavior, not poor road engineering, Lambert said. Engineers can fix problems, but only if those problems are related to the roads and not the drivers who travel them.

That’s where law enforcement steps in, and it’s telling that State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson took a call his first day on the job from DOTD Secretary William Ankner.

Edmonson acknowledged that each agency has a role to play in reducing Louisiana’s traffic fatality rate, which last year was the third highest in the nation according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

For his part, Edmonson said he wants increased visibility by his troopers on the highways. More troopers enforcing laws should lead to fewer drivers making poor driving decisions that cause wrecks.