The Colorado Department of Transportation has approved $46 to $50 million dollars to improve a stretch of highway where drivers have often collided with animals, reports Steamboat Today. Eight-foot-wide shoulders and wildlife underpasses are planned to make the area safer.
Depending on weather, the project could be finished as late as spring 2017.
There were 191 people hurt in accidents on the highway from 1993 to 2012, according to CDOT. There also were 14 fatal accidents with 16 deaths.
Mule deer and other wildlife frequently cross the highway because their primary water source, the Blue River, is on the other side of the road from their winter range.
In 2011, West Grand Schools bus driver Jeanette DeBell told the Sky Hi Daily News that animal casualties on the highway were so common, students would make a game out of counting how many dead carcasses they saw on the side of the road.
Read more at Steamboat Today.
