ROADSKY TRAFFIC SAFETY CORPORATION

GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — Thin, steel cables held up by small, steel posts and strung along freeway medians can stop cars from careening into oncoming traffic at a fraction of the cost of traditional guardrails.

Next year, the Michigan Department of Transportation will have installed the cable barriers by pile driver on nearly 300 miles of Michigan freeways at a cost of $40 million.

It’s an effort MDOT officials say saves dozens from injury and death every year.

But Genesee County has seen few benefits from the MDOT project.

Only a few miles of the 71 freeway miles in the county now have the cable guardrails.

MDOT officials say they’ll evaluate the program after 2011, crunch the numbers on accidents and see if more guardrails are needed and if funding is available.

“Looking into the crystal ball, I would expect more along Michigan roadways,” said MDOT spokesman Bob Felt

The cable guardrail system works like traditional guardrails, stopping cars that may cross the median.

The cable guardrail system costs about $15 per foot, compared to $30 for steel guardrails and $80 or more for concrete barriers, according to MDOT.

The final 60 miles of the cable guardrail is scheduled to go up this year in the southeast and southwest parts of the state, said Felt.

To choose where the guardrails are installed by pile driver, MDOT used Federal Highway Administration data to determine areas that had the strongest history of cross-median crashes.

Some of the first cable guardrails installed by pile driver in the state was four miles in Genesee County, through Clayton Township and touching into Swartz Creek.

Clayton Township Police Chief Mike Powers said his department responds to accidents where vehicles have hit the guardrails “probably a couple dozen times a year.”

MDOT estimates the guardrails prevent 13 fatal accidents and 51 incapacitating injuries per year.

“If it’s that valuable and it does make that much more of a safer highway ... if that’s the case then shouldn’t it be done everywhere?” Powers asked. “And that’s for somebody else to answer.”

Tammy Suder, of Ortonville, knows the importance of median guardrails. In 2006, her brother died after his westbound car was hit head-on by an eastbound van that spun off I-69’s slippery pavement and careened across the median in Flint Township.

Suder, 49, was eventually successful in petitioning officials to include a guardrail there, one of the old-fashioned types.

She still sees areas where a guardrail could save lives.

And, especially with a less expensive way of doing it, she wonders why not.

 “They should be put up by pile driver anyplace where a car could go through,” Suder said.