Poor Highway Design Allegedly Causes Highway Accident

Case Overview

The case involves a man who was injured in a motor vehicle accident. He had just gotten on the highway and was traveling in a lane that merged from two lanes down to one. As he was merging, he hit a large pothole which caused his front tire to go off the edge of the road. When the driver corrected to get back onto the road, he overcorrected, came across the center line, and struck another vehicle head-on. The man suffered a traumatic brain injury and was unable to return to work for 8 months. An expert in highway design and engineering was sought to opine on the surfacing of the roadway.

Questions to the Engineering expert and their responses

Please describe your experience in highway design and/or engineering.

I have been involved in all aspects of traffic engineering (design, operations, maintenance, highway road design, cross sections, etc) since 1965.

What goes into consideration into the design with regards to the shoulder?

There are two factors that are considered in designing highway shoulders. One is maintenance practice, the other is the cross slope design. Typically, there should be a 2% cross slope on the shoulder and the shoulder should always be brought up to the level of the pavement when it is compacted.

What could have been done to stabilize the shoulder and/or prevent the shoulder from washing out?

Most drivers are not equipped to know how to recover from that much of a dropoff. Typically, drivers turn one way to correct the issue when they should really turn the other and they end up overcorrecting. To prevent this, the shoulder should have minimal dropoff. I would want to know what kind of car the individual was driving and I would want to know the maintenance practice of the highway and how recently maintenance was performed. I would also be interested to know if this was a situation where someone else had previously reported the problem.

About the expert

This highly qualified expert has over 40 years of experience in traffic engineering. He earned his BS in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison before beginning his career. Today, he is a certified professional traffic operations engineer and a licensed professional engineer in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This expert is also a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Public Works Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. He has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the APWA 1996 Public Works Project of the Year and the ITE Wisconsin Section 2005 Distinguished Service Award. This expert previously served as a traffic operations engineer for the City of Madison, as the vice president and a sales engineer at Tucker Co., Inc., as the president of Signal & Light Engineering Systems, Inc., as the president of Traffic Engineering Services, Inc., and as the associate vice president of Edwards & Kelcey, Inc. He is currently the president of a traffic engineering firm and a part-time transportation instructor at a university in Wisconsin.