DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709040213

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

ONLY ONE WAY TO SAVE LIVES OF DRIVERS ON BRIDGE-TUNNEL: MAKE IT A NO-PASSING ZONE

A week ago, at about the same time Princess Diana was dying in a traffic underpass in Paris, five people were killed when a car flew off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and plunged into the water.

Few of us, in our mundane lives, are likely to be hounded by paparazzi or imperiled by a drunken chauffeur. The Bridge-Tunnel, though, can be a real threat. At least three times this summer, head-on collisions - or a desperate attempt to avoid one - have taken lives or shut down the crossing for hours while the wounded and the wreckage were carted away.

The Bridge-Tunnel is 17.6 miles long, 33 years old, and long overdue for the overhaul that's under way. The view, though, is so spectacular that sometimes you don't even mind the $10 toll.

But I've never driven that piece of roadway without a bit of white-knuckle fear: ``What if . . . ?''

What if some yahoo coming the other direction forgets he's in two-way traffic and decides to whip out around the Winnebago that's slowing his progress? Where do you go?

There's no wide shoulder to turn onto, no grassy median providing a last-ditch escape. It's just you, the guardrail and the water down below - or a head-on crash at 55 mph, with survival odds about as good as a dive over the side.

For the next two years, until construction on a parallel bridge is complete, the Bridge-Tunnel will remain two-way traffic on a two-lane road that's no wider than my driveway.

The trouble is, highway design and driving habits have changed dramatically in the generation since the bridge opened in 1963. Two-way traffic was fairly common back then. Now, just about any cross-town street has multiple lanes. The fine art of passing a car into oncoming traffic is pretty well lost.

Last week's tragedy happened when the driver of a four-cylinder Hyundai subcompact, burdened with three adults, two children and, presumably, a pile of luggage, miscalculated how much power and distance it takes to overtake another car at highway speed. All five died when the Hyundai's panicked driver tried to wheel back into her own lane, clipped another car, and was catapulted into the sea.

There is only one way to cut the odds of this happening again, and that's to make the whole span a no-passing zone.

Your first reaction, like mine, is to think, ``Ah, jeez, I'll get behind some granny who's just pokin' along out there and I'll never get across.''

It can seem that way when you're lagging behind some weekend fisherman who's hauling the Lusitania's sister ship on a trailer behind his station wagon. But do the math:

If you drove the bridge-tunnel at a steady 55 mph, the speed limit, you would get across in 19.2 minutes. If you got behind somebody who was really poking along - say, at 45 mph, a full 10 miles under the speed limit - you would cross in 23.5 minutes.

The difference - 4.3 minutes - is about two commercial breaks in a pro football game. Are those few ticks of the clock worth your life? 'Course not.

Sadly, though, the highways are increasingly infested with people who are so drenched in self-importance that they're willing to bet their butt - and yours - on their ability to shave 4 minutes off their precious travel time. You see more and more drivers out there now who seem almost desperate to get wherever they're going faster than they have a right to expect.

I don't like yielding rights to the thoughtless and the inept any more than you do. But a couple of extra minutes driving that 17 miles over open water is far preferable to the sort of horrors we've seen out there over the past few weeks. End it now. Make it a no-passing zone.

Bridge-Tunnel officials say traffic engineers believe that a ban on passing would lead to a lot of tailgaiting, horn-blowing and other driver frustration. It would seem, though, that a little frustration is better than a whole lot of death.

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