I just got back from a jaunt into the superstition mountains east of Phoenix. On the way down to a little place called Tortilla Flats there is a very windy road that curves around the side of a canyon, manytimes my right tires were merely 18 inches from a very derep drop…I noticed that there were few guardrails on the shoulders of this road. Very few. Meaning one bad turn and see ya later! I’m not sure the rationale behind this, but it’s true nontheless. On the highway they have guardrails from preventing you from driving off into the flat desert, but on a curvy canyon road 1000 feet up, they don’t…Anyone know why this is?
Because it costs money? I assume that the highway is a state road – the other may be a local road.
It’s a state road. Had it been a Bureau of land management road I’d agree but this is a bona fide state road.
I love that stretch of road, it’s really fun to drive.
As far as no guardrails, it may be to make you drive slower. Since you thought you could go off the edge, you did drive slower, didn’t you?
See, it worked.
Could it be that that road isn’t wide enough or is too steep or can’t support the weight of the trucks that haul all that steel up the mountain? Another possibility is that the soil can’t hold the posts that support the guardrails.
I agree it is very fun to drive that road. It will take you all the way to Roosevelt Dam if you follow it.
I never thought of soil composition, that’s a definite possibility.
I think with a lot of those roads putting in guardrails worth a damn would be too much of an expensive engineering feat for a strictly secondary road. There’s barely enough room for the road. Where are you going to put the guardrail?
I thought guardrails were more of a psychological thing anyway. Just this morning an unfortunate local teacher went right through one into water. She didn’t survive. And it’s not like she was on a freeway or something, just a road.
I can tell you, a canyon road like that would scare the crap out of me if I was driving, and freak me out even more if I wasn’t!
Great. And how does that work with a blowout?
I imagine that some government official has done the appropriate cost/benefit calculations and determined that it’s cheaper to have the occasional car go over the edge than it is to construct guard rails on all of the roads.
Some places do it so as not to obstruct the view. It also eliminates maintenance/replacement costs.
No guard rails in dangerous places plus careless driving = opportunities for “natural selection.”
I’ve noticed a general absence of guardrails out west, especially in parts of California. On the East Coast, some states are so safety-conscious they’ll erect a guardrail (AND Jersey barrier) around a discarded can of Dr. Pepper.
Out west, the philosophy can be described as this: you’re on your own, ace! One slip-up and you will literally plunge to your death. I think the reason is the thousands of miles of exposure makes guardrails prohibitively expensive. Lord knows California is liberal and progressive; I just don’t think they have the megabucks to do much about it. Erect guardrails on steep cliffs is expensive.
I know a gal whose car went over a cliff in California. No guardrail. A random tree stump stopped it from plunging into the abyss. She was adjusting her stereo.
Er… I’m no geologist or civil engineer or anything, but if the dirt can’t hold a post, should you really be putting a road on it that’s for anything but a mountain goat?
Well, I was thinking along the lines of maybe the road was blasted out of a very rocky canyon wall, not loose soil, and that driving posts for guardrails might be cost prohibitive.
Doh! :smack: I see what you’re saying…I misspoke in the original post… I was visualizing the scree that results from blasting out a road…that’s what I meant by not being able to support the posts…just a bunch of rocks, not soil.
It could be that the guard rails along the highway in the desert were there for the protection of the desert, rather than the road users.
I suspect it’s a money thing – putting up guardrails for the entire length of the canyon would’ve bankrupted the government when it starting to do this, and the locals all figured they’d lived without them for years, anyhow. I’ll bet you’ll see more gfuardrails going in as years go by and more non-locals move in.
When I lived in Salt Lake, I was surprised to see hopw few guardrails there were in the canyons. Heck, I was surprised to see a lot of unpaved roads there. Particularly interesting were Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons, which feature ski lodges at the top and sheer dropoffs to the cottonwood creeeks below. And no guardrails. Freaked out my parents when they came to visit. Not to mention the way it freaked out my future bride, Pepper Mill. But i got so used to it that UI helped someone move up to one of those lodges on a dark night with fog so thicvk you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. It took three trips.
I think that’s the main reason. Plus, at least in Colorado, guard rails interfere with snow removal.
enipla have you ever been up Independence pass between Leadville and Aspen? A killer drive with lethal drops and a great view at the top. On the Leadville side of the pass, no guard rails. On the Aspen side there are guardrails all over the place. Since they close the pass as soon as it snows. I think its money, not maintenance.