Northbound traffic on U.S. Highway 101 passes by the scene of a repaired slide at mile marker 202 on Tuesday afternoon. Four accidents have occurred at the site north of Gardiner this month, with six more in the previous three months. Cars have ended up at the bottom of the hill or gone into a creek. But no one was seriously hurt. World Photo by Lou Sennick

GARDINER — Driving U.S. Highway 101 can be an adventure for drivers navigating the curving, rolling and twisting road stretching from California to Washington. But one span of the highway seems to be giving roadsters a lot of trouble lately, as four vehicles in seven days have rolled from the road down a ravine. 

Some drivers think the curve at milepost 202 is downright dangerous, while representatives from Oregon State Police and the Oregon Department of Transportation blame driver error, wet road conditions and the curvy nature of the road for the alarming rate of accidents.

ODOT staff is checking to see if there’s more to the crashes than a little rain and speeding.

“I think there’s an issue. There’s probably one of enforcement and one of engineering,” said OSP Lt. Steve Smartt, who added that people are likely driving too fast for conditions.

Seven miles north of Gardiner, near Takenitch Lake, the milepost marker stands almost directly across from the ravine estimated at 100 to 150 feet deep. At the bottom, a creek slices through the chasm floor. The remains of burnt flares line the sides of the road and one bent metal post at the lip of the ravine give the only evidence of the recent crashes.

No fatalities have occurred at the site of 11 accidents since June 5, four of which happened in one week this month. However, some drivers, like Reedsport resident Julita Fong, have been seriously injured. Fong believes that if a guardrail lined the northbound side of the road, her accident wouldn’t have been as serious. She wouldn’t have broken her neck.

“But for grace of God, I could be another Christopher Reeves,” Fong, 75, said.

Driving the 101 in an mid-morning rain on Nov. 4, Fong was on the curve when a vehicle far ahead flashed its brake lights. She tapped her own brakes and her 1999 Toyota 4Runner spun, skidded over the embankment and went airborne. Fong said she was going about 40 miles per hour — the same as is posted on advisory signs. The day before her accident, Darryl G. Johnson, 24, of Corvallis was hurt in a rollover crash on the same curve.

“Because there was no guardrail, I just sailed over the ravine,” Fong said. “The car was completely totaled.”

Fong said she drives in that area weekly and has worried about it before.

“I thought anyone down there would be in serious trouble. Little did I know that I would be the one down there,” she said. “Hopefully ODOT will take this seriously and do something about it.”

Bob Sechler, ODOT’s lead traffic investigator for Region 3, said he’s been asked — via a grapevine starting with an OSP trooper — to check out the road.

He noted that aside from the past six months, there have been only six crashes at 202 from May 2005 to May 2008. None was fatal. Most resulted in minor to moderate injuries. Four of the drivers lost control of their vehicles and all were off-the-road crashes. Five out of the six also occurred during day-time hours on wet pavement, and speed was a factor in half.

Considering the jump from six over three years to 11 crashes in five months, Sechler said there may be an issue, but without more research, he doesn’t know what it is. He noted that a culvert failed in the area last winter and was repaired.

“That’s a little alarming for me too. It says that there is something that has changed out on the roadway,” he said.

Earlier this week, Sechler went out to look at the road, and believes people may simply be driving too fast for conditions. He described the segment in question as having a 730-foot-long right curve with a descending downgrade of 3 to 4 percent. He said when you put those two factors together, cars tend to move faster and drivers can lose control.

It also could be that the road is worn and lacks the friction it once had to prevent cars from skidding on the asphalt. In the next week or two, ODOT’s pavement testing team will examine the integrity of the roadway.

“That’s going to tell us basically if there is a friction problem when there is wet pavement,” Sechler said.

Possible fixes could include pouring new asphalt in the area or cutting fine grooves in the road to roughen up the surface. This process would be done with a diamond grinder, said Wade Luckman, ODOT’s assistant district 7 manager for Coos, Curry and Douglas counties. He said the pavement testing team should have the results in two to three weeks.

Luckman also said that while he and other ODOT officials don’t know if the issue is with the condition of the road, they are worried about the spike in crashes.

“We are concerned, especially with the numbers we have heard, so we are aggressively seeking a solution,” Luckman said.

They could install a guardrail or more signage, said Sechler, but ODOT staff will have to get cost estimates to see if those options are plausible. There already are two signs about 500 to 600 feet in advance of the curve, on the north and southbound sides, indicating a reverse curve and advising drivers to slow down to 40 miles per hour.

“We don’t want to be reactive and just put things up. If there is a problem, we’d like to basically address the issue,” Sechler said. “Guardrail will keep people back on the roadway, but then again, if there is a problem, in this case people driving too fast for road conditions, guardrail isn’t going to address that.”

Sechler would like to see more speed enforcement in what he described as no man’s land.

Smartt said that’s exactly what his office plans to do. Although short on personnel, troopers will begin patrolling the area around milepost 202 starting immediately, he said.

“If I have more than one person on, I’ll have a trooper patrolling north of Reedsport on that stretch of highway,” he said.

For milepost 202 crashes, Smartt said troopers have cited one driver for failure to maintain the lane and two for careless driving.

Whatever the reason behind the crashes, Smartt said his troopers will keep a closer eye on the area to slow drivers down.

“We will definitely pay more attention to the enforcement end up there,” he said.