THE VERNON GRUMBLE - RUMBLE vs MUMBLE

Why would anyone oppose road safety?  Well, perhaps, when the solution can be heard from your bedroom.

State Route 527 in Vernon (known locally as West Street), which carries 7000+ cars a day, has a blemished record for traffic accidents:  90 crashes in a recent three-year period. Too often cars veer over the centerline of the highway, off the road or into oncoming traffic.

The proposed solution by CDOT is “rumble strips”. 

"Rumble Strips"

You’ve probably seen, felt or heard them in your own driving… when the road makes a low rumbling sound as you drive across the centerline.  The sensations are designed to alert you, usually in time to correct your path and avoid danger.

CDOT told the Hartford Courant that “hundreds of miles of centerline rumble strips have been installed across Connecticut, and CTDOT has received very few noise complaints. They remain a low-cost improvement with a significant safety benefit for the traveling public.”

Vernon’s mayor Dan Champagne says he’s all for public safety but not if it comes with noise.  In a posting on Facebook he writes: “When cars and trucks drive on these rumble strips they make a lot of noise and neighbors are going to hear them around the clock.  Cars and trucks travel West Street at all hours of the day and the noise is going to be constant.”

Mayor Champagne

But isn’t that the idea, Mr. Mayor? 

Those rumble strips only make noise when people are heading toward an accident.  If people drive better there’ll be no noise and maybe no accidents.  And the sound of crashing metal as vehicles collide isn’t exactly a lullaby.

As CDOT points out:  “In Connecticut, approximately 30 deaths and 2,000 injuries occur each year from head-on and sideswipe opposite direction crashes… when a vehicle crosses over the centerline and impacts a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction.” 

“Nationwide data shows 18% of non-intersection fatal crashes are caused by two vehicles colliding head-on and that 75% of these head-on crashes occur on undivided two-lane roads.”  And that’s not exactly quiet, right?

Still, CDOT has been through this before in 1999 at an undisclosed “high-crash location” when rumble strips proved too noisy and were ripped out.

But wait.  There may be a solution that warns wayward drivers without waking the neighbors from their slumber:  not rumble strips but “mumble strips”.

CDOT says they can now groove the centerline with sinusoidal designs (ripples rather than bumps) that are "formed by wave patterns in the pavement rather than grooves cut into it, making them quieter than earlier designs."  Wavy instead of groovy, man.

Studies show the 'mumble' pattern is up to 11 dB quieter.   At its best, that roughly cuts the noise in half.

Total cost for the Vernon project:  just $5000 in state funds, less than the cost of a single head-on crash, not even factoring in the human costs of injuries.

To their credit, CDOT will hold a virtual informational meeting on this plan on October 27th, so residents will have a chance to be heard… possibly louder than the feared hum from Route 527.