State highway officials are testing a new cable-barrier system designed to save more lives on interstates in St. James and St. Tammany Parishes. 

A similar cable barrier is also planned for a stretch of Airline Highway that has seen more than its share of fatalities between I-310 and Norco, including one that claimed the lives of Sandra Washington’s four children.

To this day no one knows exactly why Washington's four children crashed into the murky Borrow Pit Canal off Airline Highway, but Washington believes they may have survived if a barrier had prevented them from going into the canal.

"I do believe had something been there it would have been a different picture."

Since that 2003 accident, Washington and other activists in St. Charles have been pursuing a barrier to separate traffic from the canal, including St. Rose Volunteer Fire Chief and Councilman Larry Cochran.

"It's been too long.  For twenty years I’ve been pulling people out that canal.  How many people's in that canal we don't know about?" he said.

In 2004 a state and federal task force decided to make improvements along the stretch, including closing median crossovers, but it shied away from a barrier over concerns that cars would strike them and bounce back into oncoming traffic.

However, after 17 fatalities in 15 years, the state legislature appropriated $1 million earlier this year for transportation officials to install a cable barrier, according to DOTD Spokesman Dustin Annison.

"This whole project is designed to keep people out the canal and we believe it's gonna work well."

He said the DOTD will start designing the Airline barrier system in a couple of weeks, but it will not be finished until the end of 2009 or constructed until 2010.

In the next week or two crews will finish installing Louisiana's very first high-tension cable barriers on 3.7 miles of I-10 in St. James Parish.  By July next year the same barriers will also divide 32 miles of I-12 in St. Tammany.

The pilot program to prevent crossover crashes cost the state $6.6 million and are tested to outperform concrete barriers and guardrails.

"These absorb the energy from the collision and will actually just keep you in the median rather than throwing you back in the roadway," said Annison.