WSDOT repairs crash attenuator after collision on I-5

WSDOT crews had to fix a damaged crash attenuator in the downtown I-5 express lanes during Saturday's (3/15) closure. 

There was no mention of injury to WSDOT workers.

The crash attenuator is a piece of equipment attached to the back of WSDOT work vehicles. It absorbs hits and protects crew members and vehicles which are stopped on the freeway to make road repairs when someone runs into them.

WSDOT has lost a lot of workers due to impaired or inattentive drivers ignoring warnings, staying in their lane, and plowing into the back of vehicles and hitting workers. (See previous story)

They are now protected by the attenuators.

Some of the drivers are looking at their phones, but my impression, after reading these reports for a decade, is that most of them are drunk.

The other story I see is of drunk drivers who enter the freeway from an off ramp and drive the wrong way until they crash head on into a vehicle traveling the right direction.

I'm not sure what can be done about people who think they are fine to drive after they have been drinking. 

Someone always seems to get around the ignition interlock devices - the breathalyzers attached to a drunk's vehicle that they have to blow into before the car will start. I recall the story of the man who got his young grandson to blow into the tube so grandpa could drive.

But I'm glad that the people who maintain our highways are no longer dying on the job.

--Diane Hettrick