Rumble Strips Best Practices (CA)

[@paulreynolds8245]

Good idea, great idea for people who can't drive (with at least some smarts) , but the cost for a smaller company, might not be a good idea. I am a professional traffic controller, the cost could be a problem.

[@benjaminjeffrey2031]

So we actually have a podcast coming out at www.reroutesafety.com on Monday with the president of PSS innovations and I would encourage you to check it out. It does create an enormous cost to small time traffic control outfits $20,000 on average is no small price to pay, but putting safety aside it can still make economic sense. If you charge as we do an extra $200 daily for TC that means that you break even at 100 days in CA it's easy for us to do 100 days in a year and we have seen them last somewhere between 3 - 5 years. If we can keep them busy we are 3X our money in 4 years and that's a pretty good investment. Now if you work in Minnesota that time line will look different but if you have less working days the strips will last longer. They can also insulate the industry from people who aren't committed and don't know what they are doing. You are right in saying the cost is a problem, but I would argue that it can make economic sense and if it saves 1 life to me it's worth it.

[@markrobinson7875]

These rumble strips are not a good idea. They are very dangerous and should not be used. If a heavy vehicle runs over them they can fold up in the middle like a tee-pee and the next car is in for a wild ride. My personnel experience with them involved my 1966 Pontiac Parisienne convertible, a very rare classic car. I was following a heavy gravel truck through a construction zone. As the truck ran over the rumble strips it picked one up and it folded in the middle leaving about an 8 inch tee-pee. I had about 2 seconds to make my move and all I had time for was to try an avoid my oil pan. I successfully avoided my pan but the rumble strip rolled under my car creating catastrophic to my undercarriage. As it rolled up towards the back of the car it pick it off the ground and hit my emergency brake cable (locking up my back breaks) and hitting my gas tank. My car skidded sideways and I headed for the ditch (lucky I wasn't going very fast). Good news, nobody got hurt. Bad news is my wife was following me and hit the strip with my Ford pickup. By this time the strip was rolled in a ball and it hit my bumper and did some damage to my trans cover. Had it fixed - $1200 worth of damage. My car didn't fair so well - $34000 worth of damage. Frame was bent and it left gaping holes in my floor pans, also bending and twisting the supports in my car. Car is totaled and is really sad as there were very few of these cars made, and a lot few left today. These two folks in this video need to review the safety of their product. I'm going to try my best to get these things off our highways. I have already started to get them off of Texas Highways.

[@benjaminjeffrey2031]

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with these, but the rumble strips only tee pee when they are placed on the road upside down. The damage done to your vehicles was due to negligent deployment, not the product itself. This product has made enormous progress towards eliminating crashes in the workzone and especially in the queue(the line of cars just prior to the workzone). Texas is a prime example of this. Texas had the most workzone crashes in the nation per miles traveled and with the implementation of rumble strips they now have some of the safest workzones in the nation. You should seek legal advice to recuperate your money from the company that deployed those strips rather then going after a device that is saving lives every day across the country.