UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect the latest figures for cable barriers installed statewide.

Mike Parker, the long-time voice of Oregon State University’s football, basketball and baseball broadcasts, crashed his car on Interstate 5 on Monday, ultimately careening into the center barrier.

Parker, 61, tweeted a picture of the aftermath Monday.

“Well Beaver Nation, all I can say is that I'm extremely thankful to have walked away from this,” he tweeted, along with a picture of his maroon sedan with its mangled frontside sticking underneath the cable barriers separating north and southbound traffic on the freeway.

The crash occurred near Milepost 241, about eight miles north of Albany and roughly on the border of Marion and Linn counties. Parker’s wreck also happened nearly five years after Portland Commissioner Amanda Fritz’s husband and his colleague were killed on I-5 in Salem when a driver crossed the center median in an area where it was not physically separated and struck their vehicle head-on.

Parker indicated in his tweet he was lucky to survive.

“As my car spun out on I-5 south, I had some doubts,” he wrote, alluding to the severity of the crash.

The Corvallis resident thanked Oregon State Police Trooper Mike Wahlberg, emergency medical personnel and other people who assisted him. No citations were issued as a result of the crash, state police said.

State transportation officials confirmed a center cable barrier was installed on this section of freeway in 2015, a direct result of Steve Fritz and Cary Fairchild’s deaths and subsequent legislation.

“I’m grateful the median barricades installed due to the Fritz-Fairchild Act have saved another life,” Commissioner Fritz said in a tweet on Monday. The legislature approved the act in 2015 and pledged to install 100 miles of barriers on sections of I-5 within six years. Those barriers were expected to cost about $20 million, ODOT told The Oregonian at the time.

Lou Torres, a state transportation spokesman, said the agency had not heard of many cross-over fatal crashes in the past five years since it started installing barriers in areas like the section of I-5 north of Albany.

Torres said the agency had installed barriers – either concrete jersey barriers or cables -- on all of the stretch of interstate it’s possible to do so throughout the state on I-5.

“There will be some gaps because we may not be able to place cable barrier or concrete barrier because of topography, emergency vehicle turnouts, around overpasses, on curves, on bridges or at bridge approaches,” Torres said.

He added that cable barriers significantly reduce the risk of deadly, high speed crossover crashes, “they do not totally eliminate them.”

Drivers can also be seriously injured when striking the barriers.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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