Sep 2, 2023 3 min read

Last Sunday morning, 24-year-old Tyler Smith of Roscoe was killed on the Mon-Fayette Expressway near Elco. The office of the Washington County coroner reported later that day that Smith was traveling south in the northbound lane of the toll road when he hit another vehicle and injured its driver.

Unfortunately, Smith was not alone in being killed in a wrong-way crash last weekend. Drivers died in San Diego, Dallas and Nashville, and two drivers died in the Detroit area in separate accidents along Interstate 75. The idea of driving down the highway on some routine trip, obeying the rules of the road, and seeing a set of headlights barreling toward you is horrible to contemplate.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has estimated that about 500 travelers die in wrong-way crashes every year. To put this in perspective, it is a relatively small number – it represented just 3% of all fatal crashes in 2018, and your overall chances of dying in any kind of vehicle mishap are thankfully small. Nevertheless, the number of wrong-way crashes has increased in recent years, enough so that attention should be paid on how that number can be lowered.

A primary cause of wrong-way crashes is impairment, particularly from alcohol. Almost two years ago, Holly Ann Davis, a 56-year-old nursing assistant and Canonsburg resident, died early on a Sunday morning on Interstate 79 when a 28-year-old woman who had just left a Washington County nightspot slammed into her. The blood-alcohol level of the other driver was more than twice the legal limit. She survived the crash and was recently sentenced to serve time in prison. In Fayette County, a father and son from West Virginia were killed on Route 40 in South Union Township early on a Sunday morning in February 2022 by a driver going the wrong way in the eastbound lanes. Like the case in Washington County, the driver’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, according to tests that were taken following the accident.

Alcohol ignition interlocks – essentially a breathalyzer that would prevent inebriated drivers from starting their vehicles – would be one way to help reduce wrong-way crashes, and all the other accidents caused by drunken drivers. Additional sobriety checkpoints would not hurt, along with simple common sense on the part of drivers – if you’re going out and you know you’ll be drinking, call a cab, get a ride with someone sober or crash on a couch after you’ve imbibed.

Drivers also get in wrong-way crashes out of plain confusion. In 2008, a Maryland artist who was going to sell his wares at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh hit and killed another driver in a wrong-way crash on I-279 after apparently getting lost. Given the knot of roads that intersect and loop around Pittsburgh’s downtown, it’s not hard to see how an accident like this could happen. Sensors have been placed at some ramps in California that immediately alert the highway patrol if a wrong-way driver has entered the road, and Rhode Island has flashing warning signs in stretches that have seen several wrong-way crashes. Steps like these could help, particularly in urban areas where a driver might become discombobulated.

There’s probably no way to prevent each and every wrong-way crash, since millions of drivers take to America’s roads every day. But we shouldn’t accept them as an inevitability, either.