Ellicott City residents take aim at site of fatal crash

Michael Dresser | Getting There

September 8, 2008

Interstate 70 and U.S 29 in Ellicott City meet at one of the more puzzling interchanges around Baltimore. To many who live nearby, it looks like a death trap.

Janet Tillman of the Mount Hebron area of Howard County wrote to call attention to the July 19 death of Andrew Noel, 19, of Ellicott City at the site. She noted that his mother, Valerie Noel, has begun a petition to close one of the entrances to westbound I-70. According to Tillman, the petition has 2,500 signatures, and the number is growing.

"The comments from the community are consistent: 'It is an accident waiting to happen,' 'It never should have been built,' 'The concept was poor,' 'I've had several near misses there.'"

The e-mail prompted me take a trip to the interchange.

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The first thing that catches one's eye at the site is the makeshift roadside shrine. The next is that highway engineers provided two ways to get to westbound 70 when heading north on 29. The first is a traditional cloverleaf with a right-hand ramp, just past the exit to 70 east. The second, more problematic entrance is a left turn across the southbound lanes of 29.

"There have been countless near misses as impatient drivers scoot across U.S. 29, either unaware that oncoming traffic has the right of way and is traveling at 55 mph, or unconcerned," Tillman wrote.

The wisdom of this second westbound entrance seems particularly questionable when driving southbound 29 from Route 99 - the direction from which Noel was approaching on his motorcycle when an SUV turned left in front of him.

I found the sightlines less than optimal and the left entrance contrary to a driver's expectations. But according to the State Highway Administration, the ramp has a good safety record - with only 10 crashes and no previous fatalities in the 7 1/2 years since it was added.

Agency spokesman Dave Buck said the second entrance was opened when 29 was widened so that motorists could get on I-70 using a ramp that brought them up to highway speeds by the time they had to merge - instead of having to accelerate quickly after a 20 mph trip down a twisty cloverleaf.

Buck said the highway agency will take a new look at the interchange but that it is waiting for the results of the crash investigation.

That's a reasonable position. If highway agencies were to close roadways because of petition signatures or anecdotal reports of near-misses, we'd all be on foot.

Local residents should be wary of the law of unintended consequences. Perhaps the ramp that appears dangerous from the overpass level has been preventing crashes at the merge point. Perhaps closing it would lead to dangerous U-turns at 99. Playing highway engineer is a tough enough job when you have a professional license.

Still, there is something about this interchange that doesn't feel right. The fix might be as simple as adding a traffic signal or adjusting the speed limit. Maybe engineers could close the ramp but add a U-turn lane midway between the I-70 interchange and Frederick Road.

Tillman said the community is open to any reasonable solution.

Stopping SMIDSYs

Aside from the issues of the interchange, the crash that killed Noel is sadly typical of a depressingly common type of fatal collision: a vehicle making a left turn in front of an oncoming motorcycle.

Tom Vanderbilt, in his fascinating book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, writes that this type of "failure to see" crash is so common in England that folks there know them as SMIDSYs - for "Sorry, Mate, I Didn't See You."

"Many people assume that 'failure to see' means that the motorcycle itself was difficult to see, because of its size or its single headlight. But it may also be that car drivers tend to be on the lookout for other cars when entering an intersection or turning across a lane of oncoming traffic," Vanderbilt writes. "They may be in a sense 'looking through' the motorcycle, because it does not fit their mental picture of the things they should be seeing."

It seems to me that the most effective warning messages are those that are delivered with a sense of immediacy. Why not have highway officials sit down with motorcycle groups such as ABATE and identify particular corridors with the combination of heavy motorcycle use and hazardous left turns? (I'll nominate U.S. 1 in Howard County and Pulaski Highway northeast of the city.)

At times when motorcycle traffic is particularly heavy - Sunday afternoons, for instance - put out electronic message signs warning drivers to watch for bikers in those areas. My bet is that flashing messages would be more effective than static metal signs.

Would that message, combined with a likely encounter with an approaching motorcycle within a few minutes, get through drivers' heads any better than conventional approaches?

Who knows? But it seems worth a try.