Wrong-way crashes on the rise

April 26--Wrong-way crashes claimed the lives of 22 people in Ohio during the past two years, including one such fatal accident in Middletown within the last year.

The 33 wrong-way crashes reported in Butler and Warren counties over the past two years make up a small fraction of total traffic accidents. But wrong-way crashes are 100 times more deadly than other types of collisions, consistently accounting for about 1 percent of traffic fatalities state-wide.

Most recently, a fiery April 14 crash killed 35-year-old Chris A. Coleman, when he drove his Mazda 3 the wrong way and collided with a semi-truck on Interstate 70 in Clark County. The trucker driver escaped unscathed but the strip of I-70 was shut down for hours. Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers suspect Coleman may have intentionally driven head-on into a semi.

The only similar fatal crash reported in Butler County within the last two years happened when Reginald Mack, 59, of Middletown drove his vehicle the wrong direction over a grassy median on Roosevelt Boulevard and struck a tree head-on last August. Mack was later taken to Atrium Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Data shows wrong-way crashes in Ohio are on the rise in recent years, but officials say that increase is, in part, because they're tracking wrong-way crashes better. Previously, highway patrol had no specific crash cause category for wrong-way collisions. It was added in 2012, but not uniformly used until 2013.

Since then, Ohio saw an increase from 446 wrong-way crashes in 2013 to 467 in 2014. Butler County went from 10 crashes in 2013 to 13 the following year. Warren County had just five crashes both years.

Multiple studies by the National Transportation Safety Board and state highway patrols have found the same trends when it comes to wrong-way drivers: more than half the drivers are drunk and the majority of the crashes happen at night on interstates.

Safety experts and law enforcement also agree that solutions are hard to come by.

"Stopping it before a tragedy occurs, that's a tall order," said Doug Finlay, CEO of SpeedInfo, a travel information systems company that is trying to develop sensors to detect wrong-way drivers.

Some efforts have also focused on road designs to prevent entering highways the wrong way or to alert drivers to their mistake.

But ultimately the focus has to be on keeping impaired or disorientated drivers off the road, experts say.

"If we could make more progress on reducing alcohol-impaired driving, it would help reduce the incidence of wrong-way crashes," said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Impaired drivers account for one-third of all traffic deaths nationwide.

100 times more deadly

Of the roughly 900 wrong-way crashes in Ohio during the last two years, about 2.5 percent resulted in deaths. That's much higher than the state's fatality rate for all types of crashes, which was about 1.3 percent for the same years, according to Ohio Department of Public Safety data.

Wrong-way crashes on highways are more likely to involve a death, compared to those same crashes that happen on one-way city streets, where speeds are lower.

A 2013 state patrol study examined 60 wrong-way crashes on highways from January 2011 to April 2013 and found that 37 percent were fatal. Only .35 percent of all Ohio highway crashes were fatal during the same time period, making wrong-way crashes 100 times more deadly than all other types of crashes combined.

The reason? Simple physics.

"Consider that two vehicles moving toward one another at 65 mph have a combined speed of 130 mph, resulting in a very high force of impact should they meet head-on," the 2013 study by the patrol said.

What can be done?

Studies on wrong-way crashes recommended increased efforts to curb drunk driving as key to stopping these deadly collisions, along with increased education for elderly drivers and caretakers.

Recommendations have also been made about additional traffic control devices that can minimize wrong-way driving, especially on highway entrance and exit ramps.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is constantly monitoring traffic data to determine if there are any patterns or hot spots for wrong-way entrances to highways, said press secretary Matt Bruning.

"The problem is there are about 5,000 ramps around the state, and there is no trend that is showing up. It's so random. There's just not a smoking gun, like this intersection is always a problem so let's fix it," he said.

In Butler County, troopers most frequently get calls about State Route 4, which includes Monroe and Hamilton, as well as State Route 63 in Monroe, said Sgt. Brian Bost of the Butler County highway patrol post. In Warren County, state troopers are often dispatched to Interstate 71 near the Fields Ertel and Kings Mill exits as well as the State Route 122 interchange that sits off of Interstate 75, said Sgt. Chuck O'Bryon of the Lebanon highway post.

Drivers sometimes get confused on those roads and will frequently correct their mistake before an officer catches them.

Signs mark the roads on State Routes 4 and 63 in Monroe, said Lt. Brian Curlis of the Monroe Police Department. But drivers will ignore signs or get confused when it's dark out. He estimates police dispatchers answer two calls every month about wrong-way drivers.

"We've had some major accidents with wrong-way drivers on Route 4 and 63," said Curlis. "Drivers get confused on divided highways over there." He said some wrong-way driving calls can even be the result of a driver's medical problem, such as a seizure.

But, too commonly the sometimes-deadly error is the result of a drunk driver -- a problem that flashy signs can't always prevent, Bost said.

That's what likely caused the most devastating wrong-way crash some area officers could recall in recent years. Just two days before Christmas in 2012, 40-year-old Joshua Nkansah, of Fairfield, was driving with a blood-alcohol content more than four times the legal limit when he drove his minivan head-on into another minivan on a stretch of I-75 in Warren County. The crash left Nkansah and his son, David, dead. Michelle and Scott Barhorst, of Tennessee, also died and the crash, leaving their four children, who were also injured in the crash, without parents.

"The majority of wrong-way drivers are impaired, that's just from my experience," Bost said.

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