{"id":33486,"date":"2025-01-31T07:57:46","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T13:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=33486"},"modified":"2025-01-31T10:32:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T16:32:59","slug":"two-words-diverging-diamond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/31\/two-words-diverging-diamond\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Words: Diverging Diamond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Family survives wrong-way crash on James River Freeway<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A series of wrong-way crashes on the James River Freeway this month, including one that sent a mother and her two children spinning across the highway, raises concerns about driver safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weird how all these crashes are occurring in the area where they’ve added a bunch of diverging diamond interchanges<\/a> and where they’ve been tampering with traffic patterns for years and not on the parts of US 60 with lights or more traditional on ramps and off ramps.<\/p>\n

Probably will be a couple of years (or decades) before Experts and Professionals make a connection. Until then, I guess it’s up to us conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n

Oh, I know: Many of these drivers are intoxicated, and maybe some of them are not from around here, you know. But I would expect that an impaired driver might have a better chance of navigating a regular interchange than something with a lot of atypical loops and whorls.<\/p>\n

The exciting new designs, each one different!, might look good in the sketchbooks, artists’ depictions, and the awards ceremonies and magazines, but they’re a lot less fun when you’re trying to drive them at night or in the rain even when unimpaired.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b><\/font> Props to Facebook who is on it<\/em> in providing me with related content after I posted this morning:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: I have been a skeptic of this particular traffic pattern for a long time (I posted about them and roundabouts in a post in 2011<\/a> responding to Steven Den Beste, pbuh). And this is before I almost got creamed at a one such interchange in Joplin where I was driving the family to an athletic event some, jeez Louise, five or six years ago now. No doubt I would have been coming down the ramp to Range Line Road after having driven directly into the sunset and small city traffic. I didn’t realize the underpass was a double diamond–most of our interchanges in Springfield at the time went over the highway (although we have a couple under the highway now), so I yielded and as nothing was coming from my left, I made my right. Ha, ha! Joke was on me! The lanes immediately to the left were the southbound traffic which would have not been coming my way–southbound traffic was stopped at the light to my right across the lanes because the northbound traffic had a green light–and it was coming at 40 miles an hour on the lanes across the roadway, obscured by the pillars and jersey barriers in the middle of the road. I would say I got tootled<\/em> at, but that’s not the sound of a 40 mile an hour vehicle surprised you would be so impudent as to pull out before it.<\/p>\n

I did not get creamed, but I am very sympathetic to drivers who don’t recognize the interchange type and do something foolish. Even impaired ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family survives wrong-way crash on James River Freeway: A series of wrong-way crashes on the James River Freeway this month, including one that sent a mother and her two children spinning across the highway, raises concerns about driver safety. Weird how all these crashes are occurring in the area where they’ve added a bunch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33486"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33493,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33486\/revisions\/33493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}