It?s not drunken driving or speeding. It?s not unlatched seat belts or inexperienced teenage drivers. The greatest danger on the nation?s highways is at a place where people are expected to be slowing down: tollbooths.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigators said toll plazas are the most deadly areas on highways, and said their design standards have gone unregulated since they were introduced 50 years ago. The NTSB recommends developing design standards for signs, pavement markings, lane width and rumble strips to help curb deadly accidents.
Toll plazas account for 49 percent of all interstate accidents in Illinois and 38 percent in New Jersey, according to an NTSB report.
Virginia and Maryland operate seven toll road systems, including the Dulles Toll Road and the Chesapeake Bay bridges and tunnels. The systems brought in $490 million in tolls in 2004, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Accident numbers for the systems were not included in the NTSB report, and not readily available from local officials.
But with both states considering proposals to add high-occupancy toll lanes around the Capital Beltway, are officials making the roads more dangerous?
Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman Tamara Neale said all of the current HOT lane proposals would use new technology that would prevent most “plaza”-related accidents.
Neale said most of the problems are created by the retrofitting of traditional plazas for electronic, high-speed toll collection. Drivers with the electronic passes are often traveling at high speeds through thin lanes and traveling very close to traditional toll users, she said.
The new HOT lanes would not have “structures” or “barriers” such as booths that filter traffic into thin travel lanes, but would track tolls through overhead technology. A pilot system has already seen success on Route 895, a recently opened connector between Interstates 95 and 295 near Richmond International Airport.
