A new landscaped median on Yelm Highway has caused problems for drivers
The city of Lacey has responded with a fix to a landscaped median on Yelm Highway after several drivers have crashed into it at night.
Earlier this month, Patti Simpson of Olympia and her husband were driving to a physical therapy appointment in Lacey. To get there, they headed east on Yelm Highway, then planned to turn left on Corporate Center Drive Southeast.
There is a center turn lane on Yelm Highway there, but after a summer filled with road construction, there was a new addition to that lane: a new landscaped median.
The Simpsons headed to their appointment about 5 p.m. Wednesday. It was dark, it was raining and by the time they got ready to turn left, they had no idea the median was even there. When it was all over, they had “shredded two tires,” Patti Simpson said.
“He just didn’t see it,” she said about her husband, who was driving, and the median. “He drove over it and two tires and two rims were just gone.”
They weren’t the first to do this, Simpson quickly learned. Another car hit it 10 minutes later, and a bystander told the Simpsons two other vehicles had hit it in the last week.
“I just think people should be aware of it,” Simpson told The Olympian.
The city of Lacey has responded by putting up a “keep right” sign on the median itself, City Engineer Roger Schoessel told The Olympian.
Schoessel said the median was installed on Yelm Highway over the summer when the road was repaved. During construction, a worker stepped off the median and was hit by a passing vehicle.
This story was originally published December 20, 2019 at 7:00 AM.
