Wis. installs sign to reduce crashes

Wisconsin transportation officials hope an experimental sign will help decrease crashes at a rural highway intersection, BusinessNorth in Duluth, Minn., reported.

The equipment at the intersection of Highways 53 and 77 in Minong includes a sign to let drivers know when it is safe to cross the highway.

“When you pull up at Minong what will come up is basically a divided highway symbol,” Department of Transportation Traffic Safety Engineer Greg Helgeson told BusinessNorth. “When there is approaching traffic on Highway 53 there will be some little warning symbols that come up on that divided highway sign. First there will be a yellow symbol that will come up indicating that there is a vehicle that is approaching. As that vehicle gets in a point when it’s in a critical location an actual red ‘Do not cross’ or ‘Do not make a left turn’ symbol will come up with a circle around it.”

More fatal car crashes happened in rural than in urban areas of Wisconsin in 2007. Helgeson said many of those crashes happened when a driver was attempting to cross a highway.

The new traffic-safety equipment was developed by engineers and psychologists at the University of Minnesota Intelligent Vehicles Lab.

“The Intelligent Vehicles Lab basically figured out where the vehicles are at, how fast they’re traveling and the gaps between them,” said the lab’s director, Craig Shankwitz. “We’ve taken a portable system throughout the country to look at driver behavior and how drivers reject unsafe gaps.”

Helgeson said the new safety sign should be operating by December.