What are county residents willing to sacrifice for safety?

It’s a question that’s been on the minds of many in our area since St. Louis and Lake counties began installing rumble stripes along the edges of county roadways. The stripes are intended to alert inattentive or drowsy drivers that they might be straying towards the ditch and they also improve the visibility of the white “fog” line during wet weather, especially at night.

No one will dispute that improving highway safety is a laudable goal, but it is one that has always been balanced against a wide array of other societal benefits. Our highways, after all, would be much safer if a 25-mile per hour speed limit were enforced. We don’t enforce such a limit because doing so has too many drawbacks—some tangible, others less so— that outweigh the benefits of slower speeds.

The county’s drive to install rumble stripes is another such balancing act, one that appears to have fallen too heavily on the side of safety, at the expense of some of the intangibles that make life in rural parts of the county desirable for many.

From a purely economic standpoint, the public safety advocates and highway engineers may be able to point to a reasonable return on investment when it comes to rumble stripes, but that’s only because their calculations leave some of the most important values out of the equation.

The intangible qualities of rural life, such as a quiet and peaceful environment, are far more valuable and persuasive for many than any incremental improvement in safety. We routinely hear the same complaints when county crews use heavy machinery to brush rural roads, leaving behind large amounts of unsightly debris. To engineers and road crews, it’s necessary maintenance that improves visibility, and thus safety. For many rural residents, who’ve never seen an accident on their road related to poor visibility, or anything else, it seems an unnecessary despoiling of their local environment.

Officials in many other parts of the country are sensitive to such concerns, but St. Louis County, in particular, has shown little interest in protecting esthetic qualities in its road maintenance program, or in anything else.

In many other states, rumble stripes have been moved to the right of fog lines in order to minimize the frequency of vehicle impacts and to help address concerns about noise. St. Louis County officials should consider the same approach as they plan to greatly expand the use of rumble stripes over the next couple years.

The county should also stop installing rumble stripes on roadways with insufficient shoulders to allow for driver recovery. The Federal Highway Administration notes that installing the stripes in situations where there is little room for recovery is of “questionable value.” County highway officials note that the FHA’s advisory is merely a guideline, one that they don’t have to follow. But that’s the wrong attitude. For the county to use tax dollars in a way that diminishes the quality of life of its rural residents, without achieving any appreciable benefit in terms of safety, is indefensible and it should be stopped.

It’s time for the county board to take up the issue. Commissioners should not hide behind the recommendations of highway engineers, particularly when those engineers only consider one side of the equation. Balancing competing societal benefits and interests is the job of politicians, not unelected bureaucrats.