Highway 54 safety audit nearly complete; family of teenage crash victims want change
More than a month after a fatal crash that killed two teenagers, the Missouri Department of Transportation is wrapping up a safety audit for the area. The audit will include Highway 54 from Kingdom City to Lake of the Ozarks.
Karlie Jones and Caleb McClain were killed in July when McClain’s car crossed the median into oncoming traffic.
Dan Reed and Jones’ father, Aron, are close friends. Reed said he’s known Jones since she was about six years old.
“What’s the price of a kids life? $20,000? $50,000? $200,000? There is no price.”
Recently, Reed noticed guard rails being replaced on Highway 50 just west of the Missouri River Bridge. In Reed’s opinion, the money spent on those replacement guardrails could have been used for guardrails or guard cables in the area where Jones and McClain’s accident took place.
There’s been at least one other fatal crash in close proximity to where Karlie and Caleb’s happened.
“What’s going on with the old guardrail? Why can’t they take the old guardrail and take it over there and put this old guardrail back to use?”
According to MoDOT, the guardrails on Highway 50 are being replaced as part of the road resurfacing project happening in that area. MoDOT said a common practice when upgrading the pavement is to also upgrade the “hardware”, in this case, the guardrails. In essence, if the road needs to be improved, so do the guardrails. After the guardrails are replaced, they are recycled by the contractors and not reused on other projects.
“A lot of the guardrail they’re taking out is 15 or 20 years old,” MoDOT Engineer Travis Koestner said.
Reed is hoping for something to change on Highway 54 where his friend’s daughter and her boyfriend were killed. Including Jones and McClain, he said, there have been three fatal crashes in the area in the last year-and-a-half. He would like to see more safety features added.
MoDOT said guard cables may not do the trick, but they still have to review the safety audit once it is complete. They will then work with Missouri State Highway Patrol on possible changes and improvements.
