CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On Tuesday, the winding stretch of I-90 roadway -- famously known as Dead Man's Curve -- got another one.

Not another victim. Heck, fatalities are nearly unheard of at Dead Man's Curve. A veteran Cleveland police crash investigator knows of only two since the Grand Prix course-turned highway opened to drivers in 1958.

But an eastbound tractor-trailer took the curve too fast just after noon, and a load of metal coils spilled onto the roadway, which eventually sent an GMC sport utility vehicle flipping over as the driver tried to hopscotch to safety.

A tow truck had to be called for the SUV, the metal coils hauled away and traffic was snarled for four hours. You know the drill.

The accident was the 63rd at the curve involving commercial truck traffic since 2009, according to crash reports filed with the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Those wrecks have caused property damage more than half the time and caused injuries in at least 24 cases.

A check of the truck crash records for the curve show the usual reasons -- unsafe speeds, following too closely, improper lane changes. But what about the roadway design itself? Does a freeway where big rigs and others have to slow down to 35 mph really make any cotton-picking sense?

"We aren't police investigators. We don't know the exact causes of crashes but certainly speed played a factor in many of crashes, and unstable loads could play a factor in many," said Steve Faulkner, press secretary for the Ohio Department of Transportation. "I don't believe you are going to see a police report that says roadway design caused an accident."

In the next breath though, Faulkner acknowledged that the I-90 Inner Belt Curve -- ODOT officials get huffy at the "dead man" nickname -- is flawed and far below today's design standards. But just like Northeast Ohio drivers, ODOT officials are stuck with it.

"Would we build a road like that today? No. That design is no longer even valid," Faulkner said. "We wouldn't build the road using that kind of geometric measurement. I can't get in the head of the design engineer from back in the 1950s, but I can tell you that it met all of the guidelines and regulations at that time."

Faulkner said the road was designed in 1955, when tail fins still ruled the road and having drivers slow down for sharp curves on the freeway was perfectly acceptable.

"Sixty years have passed and a lot can change, and it has when it comes to the geometric standards when building or restructuring a section of roadway," he said.

Faulkner noted that about 2.1 million trucks travel through the curve annually, so having an accident rate of 63 since 2009 isn't alarming.

Sgt. Jeff Tyhulski, a 20-year veteran of the Cleveland Police accident investigation unit, said he knows of only two fatalities at the curve both from a decade or more ago, and that serious injuries from accidents are pretty rare as well on Dead Man's Curve.

ODOT is out of cheap fixes to the problem. It has installed huge speed limit signs, rumble strips and lowered the speed limit on Dead Man's Curve. ODOT's permanent fix is a $301 million plan to soften the curve so cars could travel 55 mph instead of being forced to slow down.

But that idea resides in what ODOT calls Tier 3, a kind of purgatory for highway projects the agency wants to do but has no hope of funding anytime soon.

The only real chance for getting projects done from Tier 3 before the Browns win a Super Bowl is for ODOT to get a major influx of money. Faulkner said that's why creative approaches like privatization of state rest stops or leasing the Ohio Turnpike are being discussed.

Dead Man's Curve has been a pain in the gearshift for truckers since it was built, said Larry Davis, president of the Ohio Trucking Association. "I'm born and raised in Medina, so I've been listening to complaints about Dead Man's Curve for 40 years," he said. "There have always been crash issues there."

Davis said trucking companies end up footing the bill for the clean-up of crashes whether directly or by carrying load insurance to cover it. He said he takes any talk from ODOT about a plan to straighten the curve with a big old grain of salt.

"We keep hearing they are going to fix it, but it never happens," Davis said. "That's why we are all for raising the fuel tax and using the money to improve the infrastructure."

Brian Newbacher, director of public affairs for AAA East Central, agrees with Davis that the lack of funding for projects like straightening out Dead Man's Curve is frustrating.

"Its unfortunate that traffic safety suffers as a result of a lack of money," Newbacher said. "The fact that there haven't been fatalities recently probably causes it to be a lower priority."