Later this month, rumble strips – cut into the shoulders of the Interstate – are making their way onto over 500 miles of rural, two-lane state highway segments with a history of run-off-the-road crashes. “On two-lane roadways, the centerline rumbles will help with any of those crossover crashes,” said Jerry Zogg with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
National research shows adding shoulder rumble strips can reduce death or injury from single-vehicle highway run-off crashes by 29 percent. Center line rumbles reduce head-on and side-swipe crashes by 44 percent. And Zogg said there appears to be another benefit. “When you get into any sort of bad visibility, you have now one more sort of tactile indicator that you may not be where you think you are. So it can be very helpful under those challenging conditions.”
Beginning in mid-August, a contractor will retrofit rumble strips by grinding them into about 500 miles of centerline and about 50 miles of shoulder pavement, at a cost of about $3.5 million.
