MADISON COUNTY, Ohio — Steel cable barriers line hundreds of miles of freeway medians in Ohio.
Installed in 2003, they are designed to prevent a car or truck from crossing the median and crashing into traffic heading in the opposite direction.
On Wednesday, the driver of a box truck went through the median on Interstate 70 and into oncoming traffic, killing 33-year-old Jessica Ross Sheehan.
Why did the cables fail to stop the truck? That’s what ODOT is waiting to find out.
“As this crash just occurred, the final crash report is not yet available from the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Once we have a copy of the final report, our staff will be able to evaluate this incident more thoroughly," an ODOT spokesperson told 10TV.
ODOT says, “The central goal of cable barriers is to prevent cross-median crashes due to their frequencies and severe injuries they caused when they occurred.”
According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the box truck was traveling westbound on I-70 in Jefferson Township around 3:20 p.m. when the driver went off the left side of the road and into the median. OSHP says drugs are suspected to be a factor in the crash. The driver of the truck was not injured.
In 2019, ODOT told 10TV it examined the crash history of locations with a mixture of barrier types and found about 17% of cable barrier crashes result in injuries compared to 38% of concrete and 34% of guardrail crashes.
When analyzing locations where there are cable barriers, ODOT found they reduced cross-median crashes by 91%, fatalities by 83% and serious injuries by 98%.