It took a lot of pushing to get the cables that save lives

A story of one man on a mission and his fight to convince Missouri he was right.

By Susan Weich

copyright ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

I met Warren County Coroner Roger Mauzy in August 2001, when I was covering public safety for the Post-Dispatch. We agreed to have coffee at a restaurant in Lake Saint Louis, and Mauzy wasted no time getting to the point of the meeting.

He threw down a gruesome snapshot of a fiery crash that happened in 1999. A tractor-trailer crossed Interstate 70 and smashed into a car, taking the lives of an 8-year-old St. Clair boy and his grandparents. Mauzy thought cable median barriers could help prevent such tragedies, and he was right.

And now, his hard-fought campaign may end up saving lives in more than just Missouri.

The success of Missouri's program, which began as a response to a spate of fatal crashes near Warrenton, is helping to spur a national trend for the safety devices, according to federal highway officials.

To Missouri's credit, it agreed to string the protective cable not only in Warren County but along the entire length of I-70 and all of Interstate 44 within the state too.

A total of 500 miles of barrier has been added to highways that have narrow medians, and 100 more miles are set to go up soon on Interstate 55 and U.S. Highway 67, officials said.

The barriers are effective: Statewide in 2007, fatalities caused by vehicles crossing over into oncoming traffic dropped to 10 from about 55 annually before the barriers went up. The cables aren't foolproof; three of the 10 deaths were in areas that had them.

As coroner, Mauzy hasn't had to work a crossover fatality in four years, but he isn't touting his role in the drop.

"The goal was to stop people from being killed, not to get the credit," he said.

Mauzy's modesty contradicts the fact that he basically was a thorn in MoDOT's side until the department agreed to stretch the protective barriers throughout Warren and Montgomery counties. When the barriers stopped the crashes, MoDOT agreed to put up more of them.

Mauzy, who also works as a paramedic in the county, had noticed the high number of crossover crashes even before he took office as coroner in 1997. A letter-writing campaign got nowhere, but after the crash involving the little boy, Mauzy renewed his efforts with the state.

He came up with the idea of putting memorial crosses at mile marker 191, the same spot where the crash happened. He and some other paramedics constructed 23 crosses and put the names and the dates of death on each cross. Mauzy called police, fire and EMS workers in the county, and the family of the little boy, who came to watch as Mauzy placed the crosses.

The local media showed up, and the news splash got the attention of then-state Sen. Ted House, D-St. Charles, and U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulsof, R-Columbia. They wrote letters to the highway department, and a short time later the state put up 4.5 miles of barriers.

By the time I met with Mauzy, there had been another crossover in a different spot, and he had added one more cross to the memorial.

In the next year, Mauzy added five more. After each death, he fired off a letter to the state highway department and the media, which usually got TV and newspaper coverage for the issue.

In 2002, the state agreed to put up seven more miles of the guard cable, but Mauzy didn't stop his rant.

He didn't stop the next year either, even after the state agreed to nearly 20 more miles of barriers. People were still dying, and Mauzy was up to 31 crosses at the memorial.

In the seven months between the highway department's announcement and the beginning of the work, three more people died in crossovers.

Finally, in April 2005, the state agreed to a major expansion of the barrier program, saying that it had proved to be a lifesaver.

Officials say the three strands of braided cables strung loosely on closely spaced steel posts are as effective as concrete barriers at stopping out-of-control vehicles from crossing medians. Cable barriers cost about $100,000 a mile, often less than half the expense of concrete barriers, the state said. Cables have the added advantage of grabbing and stopping vehicles, which tend to bounce off concrete barriers and re-enter traffic.

When I talked to MoDOT engineer John Miller last week, he was at a regional meeting in Memphis where cable barriers were a hot topic. Other states that have highways with 40-foot medians are thinking about erecting them, he said. Illinois officials have already put up more than 42 miles of the cable in the Metro East and are considering more.

Missouri, Miller said, was getting a lot of kudos for its proactive stance on the barriers.

"Luckily our management at MoDOT made a big commitment at the time to say we're going to move forward with this," he said.

He didn't mention Mauzy in our conversation, but I know the truth: A little county coroner took on big state government and won.

Because of Mauzy, everyone is a lot safer.