Reader's Digest Reveals 'America's Most Dangerous Highways'
Fatalities Mount But Safety Improvements Remain Stalled; Hazard Grows as Older Roads Carry Surging Traffic Load
PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y., Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Some 2,000 miles separate Marsha Goldfine and Kathy Justice. But both have lost loved ones on deadly stretches of U.S. Route 6 -- and both are still fighting to see safety improvements made.
From bad drivers to bad tires, any number of factors share the blame for highway deaths. But sometimes, as these two women learned, the highway itself is the killer. A new Reader's Digest investigation spotlights five of ``America's Most Dangerous Highways'' -- will you or your family be driving one home tonight?
With their blind spots, hairpin turns, poor drainage and lax maintenance, you're far more likely to die on one of the nation's older roads than on a high-speed interstate, the magazine warns in its November 2000 issue. And with development booming in once-rural areas, these outdated routes now carry hordes of commuters, trucks and school buses they were never designed to bear.
But as these roads take their terrible yearly toll, desperately needed improvement projects often remain stuck on the drawing board, while residents bicker and bureaucrats pass the buck.
Which roads are some of America's fastest shortcuts to death? Reader's Digest reporter Bill Ecenbarger examined accident accounts nationwide. He spoke with police, safety experts and local officials, as well as accident victims themselves -- plus loved ones of those who did not survive their last ride on ``America's Most Dangerous Highways:''

• Highway 21, south of St. Louis. "Caution: Driving Blood Alley," warns the latest version of a sign by the roadside, first put up by the father of a 19-year-old accident victim. The sign counts 31 fatalities just since 1991 on the winding two-lane stretch -- which has been swamped by a flood of new commuters but is still waiting to be widened.
• U.S. Route 431, between Seale and Eufaula, Ala. Fire chief Paul Hartgrove has placed 37 white crosses along this rural run -- one for each fatality since 1985. "They're a memory of lost lives," he explains, and also a reminder "that this is a dangerous, dangerous highway." Dubbed by one local newspaper the "Highway to Hell," it's heavily traveled by students from four nearby schools. One bus-truck crash involved 60 kids last year; is a real disaster just waiting to happen?
• Route 138, east of Palmdale, Calif. Commuters, truckers and vacationers zipping through the High Desert face dangerous merges, deep gullies that hide oncoming traffic and, at one spot, a 50-foot drop with no guardrail. The Los Angeles Times counted 56 fatalities along one 38-mile stretch in just five years.
• U.S. Route 6, western Rhode Island. Marsha Goldfine's son was killed in a 1998 collision on "Suicide Six." She is still speaking out at public hearings, trying to have the 60-year-old road widened. "I've seen every mile of highway in Rhode Island," says one former state trooper. "Without any doubt, the three miles of Route 6 just before it enters Connecticut are the most dangerous."
• U.S. Route 6, between Price and Spanish Fork, Utah. Far from Rhode Island, Kathy Justice is also battling to have Route 6 improved, especially on a stretch where the roadway narrows dangerously through a canyon. Justice lost a friend in a wreck there last year -- 28 years after her mother was killed in almost the same spot.

Reader's Digest found dozens of roads that pose deadly perils. But despite public demands for action, safety projects often remain stalled by local budget battles, environmentalists' tactics or simple bureaucratic inertia.
``How many more years, and how many more lives'' will it take, Kathy Justice asks. ``America's Most Dangerous Highways,'' in the November 2000 Reader's Digest, drives home the threat millions face every day.
Here are some other roads you should be careful on:

• US 93, ARIZONA between Wickenburg and the Hoover Dam
• HIGHWAY 74, CALIFORNIA, an 8.5-mile section between Perris and Lake Elsinore
• HIGHWAY 37, CALIFORNIA in SonomaCounty
• MERRITT PARKWAY, CONNECTICUT, the first eight miles east of the New York border
• ROUTE 6, CONNECTICUT between Bolton and Columbia
• US ROUTE 19, FLORIDA, a 30-odd-mile section in Pinellas County
• THE HARLEM-GROVETOWN ROAD, GEORGIA
• US 95, IDAHO, the entire 538 miles from Oregon to Canada
• US 169, KANSAS, along a 20 mile section in Miami County
• COMBS MOUNTAIN PARKWAY, KENTUCKY, a two-lane stretch between Campton and Salyersville
• US 301, MARYLAND, a 50-mile section south of Washington, D.C.
• ROUTE 6, MASSACHUSETTS, a five-mile patch in Seekonk
• STATE ROUTE 316, MINNESOTA in Dakota County
• HIGHWAY 75, NEBRASKA between Nebraska City and Auburn
• THE PULASKI SKYWAY, NEW JERSEY
• ROUTE 30, NEW MEXICO between Los Alamos and Espanola
• ROUTE 5, NEW YORK, east of Buffalo
• ROUTE 68, NORTH CAROLINA between the Piedmont Triad Airport and the Guilford-Rockingham County border
• US ROUTE 27, OHIO through Butler County
• HIGHWAY 18, OREGON, a 19-mile stretch from east of Sheridan to west of Grand Ronde
• CONCHESTER HIGHWAY, PENNSYLVANIA, southwest of Philadelphia
• US ROUTE 69, TEXAS through Hardin County
• ROUTE 17, VIRGINIA, a 10-mile patch between Chesapeake and the North Carolina border
• STATE HIGHWAY 522, WASHINGTON, 10 miles between Woodinville and Monroe
• ROUTE 10, WEST VIRGINA, between the towns of Logan and Man

SOURCE: Reader's Digest