Drunk driving endangers everyone on the road, not just the person behind the wheel, but that sentiment rings even truer when an inebriated driver ends up driving in the wrong direction. When this happens, fatal crashes are even more likely to occur because the force of the collision is much greater. So aside from stepping up our efforts to prevent drunk driving and catching drunk drivers before they get in an accident, is there anything we can do to ensure drunk drivers don’t end up getting on the highway headed in the wrong direction?
Preventing Wrong Way DUIs
The biggest issue with preventing wrong way DUIs is that it’s not necessarily an engineering issue. On and off ramps aren’t confusing to drivers in the right state of mind, and it’s severely impaired drivers that are causing the problems. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, a study on wrong-way driving revealed that 60 percent of wrong way accidents are caused by drunk drivers, and wrong way driving accounts for roughly 270 deaths each year.
New countermeasures to alcohol-impaired driving, as well as a renewed emphasis at the federal, state and local level, are needed, the NTSB noted in its report, also suggesting that more ignition interlock laws could help keep intoxicated drivers off the road.
But what else can be done? In Florida and Rhode Island, transportation workers have installed Wrong Way signs that flash bright lights, and they are connected to a set of billboards that alerts drivers heading in the right direction that a wrong way driver is headed their way. Transportation officials in Florida said the billboards sent out 17 wrong-way driver alerts in the Tampa Bay area in last April alone. The only real way to attempt to decrease these occurrences is to have drivers with records of dangerous driving, conduct the Florida driving test once more and incorporate problem issues into the testing criteria.
Other suggestions include:
- Improved pavement markings.
- Redesigned entry/exit ramps.
- More “Do Not Enter” and “Wrong Way” signs.
- Red flashers on the ground that illuminate when triggered by a wrong way driver.
- Spike strips that would puncture the tires of wrong way drivers.
- Cameras to identify wrong way drivers so others in the immediate vicinity can be warned.
Technological Drawbacks
While those are all interesting ideas, many of them have drawbacks. For example, the vast majority of the listed suggestions would be expensive to develop and install, while others could be problematic for other reasons. Spike strips could impede police who need to enter a roadway using an off ramp, while some suggest flashing signs sometimes attract drunk drivers like moths to a flame.
At the end of the day, the focus needs to be on preventing drunk driving in the first place. Do not get behind the wheel if you’ve had too much to drink. Not only will it save you from having to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees, but it may also save your life or the lives of others around you.
