A truck that went into the median of Interstate 5 between Medford and Central Point on Friday struck a cable barrier and came to rest pointing southbound next to northbound lanes. An Oregon Department of Transportation spokeswoman said the barrier prevented the truck from crashing into oncoming traffic.

Truck driver Timothy Low, 72, of Portland was headed south in the slow lane of Interstate 5 near Central Point shortly after 7 a.m. Friday when he and his tractor-trailer rig for some reason went left into the fast lane.

Problem was, there already was a truck there, a cement truck driven by Donovan W. Mahoney, 43, of Gold Hill. The trucks collided and veered into the freeway median.

Mahoney managed to stop his cement truck, while Low’s semi smacked into a cable barrier, became entangled and came to rest maybe 10 feet from the fast lane for oncoming traffic.

“The cable barrier undoubtedly prevented a crossover crash,” said Julie Denney, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, which has installed miles of the barriers along I-5 in southwest Oregon in recent years. “It prevented a head-on crash. It absolutely did.”

“Cable barriers save lives.”

Low was issued a citation, according to an OSP report that didn’t go into much detail.

“The crash occurred when a white [commercial motor vehicle] was traveling in the right lane and made an unlawful lane change into the left lane forcing a cement truck off the road and into the median,” Trooper Andrew Pinedo wrote. “The white CMV sideswiped the cement truck and continued into the median damaging approximately 100 feet of cable barrier.”

Mahoney was able to drive off, while Low’s truck was towed.

The Oregon Legislature made median barriers a priority on interstates in 2015, after Steve Fritz and Cary Fairchild were killed the year before on their way to work at Oregon State Hospital. Their vehicle was struck by an oncoming vehicle that crossed an unbarricaded median along I-5 north of Salem. According to an analysis by The Oregonian newspaper, the freeway north of Salem went unprotected for years because of changing priorities and a lack of money, among other reasons.

The Legislature reacted by passing Senate Bill 921, the Fritz-Fairchild Act, calling on ODOT to install median barriers on interstate highways by 2021, at a cost of $20 million to add about 100 miles of barriers. Priorities for the funding included about half of the freeway medians in southwest Oregon, including a stretch from north of Medford to south of Ashland. That included the stretch involved in Friday’s crash.

“The entire 307-mile distance of I-5 in Oregon now has cable barriers or concrete barriers where we were able to place them,” Denney said Monday.

Trouble spots in Jackson County for crossover crashes historically included a three-mile stretch near Rogue River, between mileposts 45-48, and near Ashland, near mileposts 16-18, according to Denney.

“We would also tend to see crossover crashes near interchanges because of vehicles swerving toward the median to avoid collisions with merging vehicles,” she said. “Since installing cable rail barriers in these areas, we see far fewer crossover crashes.”

Not everyone is supportive of the cable barriers, which cost less than guardrails. Some motorcycle riders don’t like them. Studies have shown they are about as dangerous as guardrails.

“The cheese graters. That’s what we call them,” said Patrick Allen, of the United Bikers of Southern Oregon and a past vice-coordinator for the motorcycle organization ABATE of Oregon. “If you hit one, you better pretty much kiss your a– goodbye.”

Allen would rather see sand pits in the median to slow vehicles, as is done with runaway truck ramps.

“Just put in a big sand trap,” he said.

A 2021 report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute states that cable barrier systems have greatly reduced crossover crashes, but that they can cause severe injury when motorcyclists strike cable system posts. The report suggested more research on barriers of all types, including guardrails and concrete barriers.

“While barrier systems have been designed and proven to be beneficial for motor vehicles they do not currently address the problems associated with motorcycle crashes,” the report stated.

It appears that cable barriers aren’t inherently much more dangerous to motorcycle riders than other common barriers, according to a peer-reviewed study published in 2011 by the Transportation Research Board. The study, which examined crashes in three states over five years, concluded that the rate at which people involved in motorcycle collisions with barriers were killed or severely injured was 40.3% for cable barriers, 40.1% for guardrails and 36.5% for concrete barriers.

Said ODOT’s Denney: “Our engineers recommend the best type of barrier after considering many factors, including slope and width of the median, traffic volumes and speeds, access onto and out of the roadway, lane configuration and much more.”