I read the article in Saturday’s paper about accidents on I-35. I just want to point out some things. I’m basing my opinion on me being a tow truck driver in Albert Lea for 25 years up until 2017. In my years of driving I can’t recall having the type of pileups we just had in the past few weeks.

We had many nights where, yes, a lot of cars were in the ditch, but they weren’t always hitting each other, because they were usually down in the ditch away from oncoming traffic. I don’t know the exact causes of these recent accidents, but what I do know is the cables that were installed would probably have prevented a lot of accidents if they were installed in the middle of the median instead of the shoulder. I know for a fact that a good foot of snow will slow a car down and keep it from crossing over the median into oncoming traffic. What happens, instead, is the cables sometimes hold the cars on the shoulder of the left lane to possibly hit or bounce back into traffic to either be hit or cause other drivers to panic and create chain reaction braking, and on ice that means a mess is about to happen.

Now think about this. Instead of being in the ditch out of the way of traffic so troopers and tow drivers can pull them out quickly, now they are spending more time because the vehicles are getting damaged and need to be towed off and car parts picked up. With that, our insurance goes up because of more damage to cars. Secondly, now state workers have to spend more time in traffic to repair all the damage to cables — that means more tax dollars. I think the plow drivers do a great job keeping roads clear, especially in our county, but in the end, drivers are going to drive too fast for conditions because they have a false sense of control with their fancy, all-wheel drive vehicles, and I lost count of how many peoples’ first words were, “I didn’t think it was that slippery.”

In the end, it’s going to keep snowing every year, and I have all the respect in the world for our law enforcement and tow drivers who risk getting hurt doing their jobs.

Doug Weigel

Albert Lea