Notes:Safety OK

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) has had a record year for safety on its road system, and attributes part of the improvement to the completion of a continuous Jersey barrier down the median of its busiest and oldest facility, the Turner Turnpike. Spokesman Mary Kay Audd told us the highway patrol said the new barrier had prevented 17 cross-median accidents since it was installed, including one involving a tractor-trailer that lost control, and ended hung-up atop the wall.

“Without the barrier we would have had real carnage from that one, bodies all over the roadway,” said Audd. 26 miles of the narrow-median turnpike had been equipped with the barrier previously, but 1995 saw a barrier placed in the remaining 63 miles of the turnpike — which runs between the state’s two principal cities Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The construction cost $12m. The Authority is now starting work on installing a similar barrier the length of its second busiest turnpike, the Will Rogers which runs from the Missouri state line 86 miles to Tulsa.

For the first time in 1995 the fatality rate on the Oklahoma T’pike was below one per 100 million vehicle-miles: 0.92 compared to 1.07/100m veh-mls in 1994. (Contact: Mary Kay Aud 404-425-3634.)•