The scene after a “snow slope” accident on the Stevenson Freeway in February last year left two people dead.A Hyundai Veloster was riding a pile of snow on northbound Stevenson between Damen and Ashland Avenues, snapped (at the bottom) in half.Both were killed.
It’s his SUV that could kill someone when he’s far below the ground on busy Lake Street in DuPage County.
“I remember putting my face and hands on the steering wheel like wishing there was no one there,” said 26-year-old Glendale Heights contractor Ramos.
He barely noticed that the northbound side of Interstate 355 he slid into was full of plowed snow.This unexpected danger propels him and his SUV into the air like a ramp helps a snowboarder take off.
All things considered, Ramos was lucky.He survived a 22-foot drop.He was not seriously injured.His hard landing didn’t kill anyone else.
During a two-week trip in Chicago and Milwaukee last February, at least four other vehicles also rode snowbanks over protective barriers on the Chicago and Milwaukee highways.One of the crashes occurred on the Stevenson Freeway on the southwest side, killing a 27-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman.
No government agency counts these rare but horrific accidents.The Chicago Sun-Times has documented 51 such “snow slope” incidents since 1994, including one last year in Portland, Oregon, in which a 57-year-old man jumped from a bridge during a snowstorm Fly down and fall to his death in the Columbia River.Earlier this year, two incidents occurred on the same stretch of Interstate 90 in Cleveland.
In the final weeks of 2000, in Chicago, nine cars slammed onto Chicago Transit Authority tracks after piling up on curb snow on both sides of the highway.
Some years are worse than others.The Sun-Times review of crash reports, lawsuits, government documents and news reports shows the crashes tend to occur in groups during particularly snowy winters, with crews plowing repeatedly.
In general, crashes involving vehicles flying off the edge of snow on elevated highways are considered “unusual incidents.”
While they hardly happen every day, road safety experts say they are also largely preventable.
Most drivers don’t consider snow on the side of the highway to be dangerous.Lawrence M. Levine, an engineer from upstate New York, said most people believe that if concrete barriers along the side of the highway get out of control, they will stay on the road, and he has acted in many court cases as Ice and snow experts testify.
“If you pile snow on it, you’re really going to break the safety gear,” Levin said.”You go directly.”
Ramos departed I-355 on the morning of February 16, 2021.He was heading north in the left lane.It snowed, but he said the road, maintained by the Illinois Department of Transportation, appeared to be plowed and salted, with “half an inch to an inch” of snow on his left shoulder encroaching on his driveway.He said he wasn’t driving fast because he had a spare on his way to get a new tire.His other tires are snow tires.
Kevin Ramos of Glendale Heights was driving on Interstate 355 on February 16, 2021, when his Jeep Grand Cherokee slid across three lanes and hit A snow-covered concrete fence drove him off the bridge onto busy Lake Street.below 20 feet.
Just south of the Lake Street overpass, Ramos said he hit a block of ice covered by snow.His jeep has fish tails.He overcorrected and slipped.
The spinning vehicle turned right across three lanes, slipping perpendicular to the 34.5-inch-tall concrete guardrail that was supposed to keep the vehicle from veering off the edge.
But the plowed snow, huddled against the barrier, like a ramp as Ramos said, almost reached the top of the barrier.The SUV rides up.
“The moment my car went up, it happened at such a slow pace that I could hardly believe it would roll over,” he said.
The passengers in the back of his Jeep landed first, on Lake Street.The vehicle then swooped forward, and for some reason, the wheels dropped, leaving the oncoming driver with only one foot on the brakes.Miraculously, they didn’t hit him.And he didn’t hit any other cars.
Kevin Ramos of the Jeep Grand Cherokee in Glendale Heights on February 16, 2021 skids in three lanes and climbs a ramp on the Veterans Memorial Turnpike in Illinois, The snow slope hit the barrier and fell more than 20 feet into Lake Street below on the busy road.
Jump accidents can be terrifying because they often occur on elevated highway ramps, overpasses, or bridges high above the ground—exposed roads freeze faster than other surfaces.
Survivors said they never felt danger because the sidewalks looked clean and there was no snow, and they thought the wall might shake them but would keep them on the road.
On February 12, 2021, four days before Kevin Ramos flew off I-355, two people were killed in a car crash along the Stevenson Freeway, which piled up. Snow is one factor.
A 2013 Hyundai Veloster carrying two men and two women, both in their 20s, was heading north between Damen and Ashland avenues around 4am.A preliminary police report said the driver lost control and “hit the ploughed snow and the concrete parapet on the right”.
The car jumped off the right side of the freeway, struck power lines and a light pole, and fell 43 feet into a grass field near Robinson Street, where it snapped in two.
A worker was at the scene last February after a car rolled over snow on the Stevenson Freeway and flew off the freeway.Both were killed.
The 27-year-old driver, Bulmaro Gomez, described his funeral on a GoFundMe page as “very friendly” and “always happy” with the death of his 22-year-old front-seat passenger, Griselda Zavala.Two friends in the back seat survived.
A toxicology test found that the driver’s blood alcohol level was more than double your Illinois drink-driving limit.He had been “driving at high speed,” according to the Illinois State Police’s crash reconstruction report.But the report also said, “Due to snow on the right shoulder, Hyundai continued to drive over the wall.”
Police photos showed the concrete guardrail there crowded with a dirty patch of snow.Like similar incidents, the accident happened after several days of heavy snow and freezing temperatures, during which time repeated tillage was done.
An IDOT ‘Snow Control’ route condition report, filed the day after the accident, noted that the roadway and shoulders near Damen needed more attention, with the word ‘shoulder’ underlined.
On Jan. 31, Zavala’s family filed a lawsuit in the Illinois Claims Court — the venue for filing claims against state agencies — alleging that IDOT failed to eliminate known hazards, or at least failed to warn drivers of them.The family is seeking $2.2 million in damages – the maximum amount allowed.
Under Illinois law, the “comparative fault” standard is used to adjudicate such cases.Even if the driver is harmed, the court must consider other factors, including whether the government agency ignored the known danger.
The deadly crash last February wasn’t the first time a vehicle has sped away over a ploughed snowdrift in Stevenson.
During the epic winter of 1978-79, nine cars flew off Interstate 55, killing at least one person, according to a 1990 Illinois Court of Claims ruling in favor of one-carers.They fell 60 feet from the highway — also between Damen and Ashland Avenues, where barriers were shorter at the time — and survived despite serious injuries.
The state “has a duty to keep highways reasonably safe,” the judge wrote, and could at least warn drivers of dangers — those posed by the state’s farming practices.
“Snow shoveling ultimately resulted in extremely dangerous ice slope conditions,” the judge wrote.
“We’re here after decades,” said Larry Rogers Jr., a lawyer for the Zavala family.”They’ve been aware of this problem for decades. They’ve done nothing to fix it.”
Rogers said the state could warn drivers with signs “or just plough it into an area that doesn’t have that danger.”"They need to figure this out.”
IDOT’s guidelines call for snow removal to “continue until snow has been removed from bridge decks and near walls or guardrails where slopes may occur.”
But because Chicago and the suburbs have more than 200 miles of freeway to maintain, the agency is free to decide how to address snow on obstacles.State officials said they were prioritizing clearing traffic lanes.
Earlier this month, Zavala’s family and friends commemorated Griselda, a “loving, giving and helpful” young woman who was eager to help her sister and mother with makeup tips, on the anniversary of the crash, and has been Looking forward to going to beauty school.
They went to the Resurrection Cemetery where she was buried and released balloons that said how much they missed her.
“When they called us and told us she was on the Stevenson Freeway and she landed under it, we were just, like: How? How could this be?” Her sister Iliana Zavala Say.”You know, we don’t get it. We can’t get around it.
“It’s pain you don’t want to endure, not even your worst enemy. Because, you know, it sucks. It’s painful. Even after a year, it’s still hard to believe what happened.
“Sometimes, we question, if the car hadn’t, you know, flipped, and, you know, off the [highway], would she have survived?”
Just after the collision between I-55 and I-355, a Chicago-area driver rode his horse through the snowy slopes along the Eisenhower Freeway.
On the same day, within two weeks of snow, two other drivers flew off a highway ramp in Milwaukee.
At around 10 a.m. on February 17, 2021, a 59-year-old woman slid her Honda Pilot SUV near Harlem Avenue west of downtown Chicago as the USS Eisenhower was heading east.According to the crash report, this pushed her car onto snow that had accumulated on the concrete guardrail.She landed next to the CTA’s blue line track.
In an email to IDOT that day, CTA Vice President of Safety Jeffrey Hulbert referred to the “urgent need for swift action” and implored state workers to remove the “launch ramp” that caused the woman’s car to fly over the obstacle.
Post time: May-24-2022