ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – News 6 has learned that a troubled off-ramp where two drivers have died in the retention pond will not be getting a guardrail after all.
News 6 has been investigating the Alafaya Trail off-ramp on S.R. 408 since 2015 when the first driver drowned and then when it happened again in January and discovered a law that is supposed to require guardrails isn’t getting results.
It’s called Chloe’s Law and the original intent when it was passed in 2017 was to force a guardrail installation at the Alafaya exit. But it didn’t because it’s very specific.
Now, a lawyer touched by the first fatality - she lost her best friend - wants to toughen the law.
Since 2015, when UCF student Chloe Arenas plunged into the pond at the bottom of the Alafaya exit and drowned, and then when Christian Bodden died after he ended up underwater in the same pond earlier this year, there has been no guardrail to stop cars from crashing into the pond and there will be no guardrail.
Orange County Public Works chief traffic engineer Dr. Masood Mirza, after a thorough analysis by engineers, worried installing a guardrail could “do more harm.”
“Guardrails, like any other traffic control/safety devices, have a specific functionality and is not meant to be one size fits all,” Mirza said. “Guardrails when provided laterally aided in keeping the vehicles running off the roads and redirecting traffic away from the hazardous condition. Guardrails are not designed and used to absorb direct impacts and stop the runaway vehicles. In this case they can do more harm to the impacting vehicles and to the drivers. Therefore, they are not recommended at the S.R. 408 off ramp and Alafaya Trail intersection.”
Clarissa Lindsey, Chloe’s close childhood friend, now an attorney in Maryland, helped pass Chloe’s Law. She said Orange County must do more.
“That’s the flat-out answer,” Lindsey said. “I mean, there is no dispute that this intersection is a huge problem.”
Chloe’s Law required the State of Florida to inspect all off-ramps where a driver went into the water and drowned to see if installing a guardrail would make it safer.
But the law has loopholes: for one, it only applies to state-owned property. The Alafaya exit retention pond is part Orange-County owned and part commercially-owned.
Also, the law only required the Florida Department of Transportation to look at fatalities between 2006 and 2016. So any driver death after 2016 does not prompt a guardrail investigation.
“I absolutely will pursue amending Chloe’s Law to include an ongoing duty for Florida to protect drivers from drowning,” Lindsey said. “And I think what that looks like would be not only, step one, stopping the evaluation of 2016, it would be a yearly requirement where they’re going back taking data and requiring an engineer to visit the site and do the evaluation.”
News 6 got the facts from FDOT:
- FDOT identified 15 fatal crashes involving retention ponds in Central Florida from 2006-2016.
- Eight of those off-ramps got guardrails.
- At the other seven off-ramps, nothing changed.
Lindsey is afraid nothing will change if Chloe’s Law doesn’t change.
“In a perfect world, you know, Chloe’s Law was a step in the right direction,” Lindsey said. “But as we see it, it only helps drivers on state roads. And this [Alafaya exit] is a county road. And I think that there are probably many other stories that are happening like Chloe and like the gentleman who lost his life in the same exact spot where we see repeat accidents.”
“It will be somebody else,” Lindsey said. “And I think we’ve seen that.”
In the next few months, Lindsey said she will look at exactly what to change with Chloe’s Law - how to make it apply to more off-ramps and protect more people and then look into going to Tallahassee to make it happen.
At the same time, News 6 is asking local lawmakers if they think Chloe’s Law is too weak and if they’d like to strengthen it.
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