The NTSB report concluded that "driving while impaired by alcohol is the primary cause of wrong-way driving collisions." The report bore out what Becerra and Gleason have found in their years on their respective police forces: Wrong-way crashes more often than not involve alcohol. 1,566 wrong-way fatal crashes on divided highways.54,789 fatal crashes on divided highways.The NTSB reported that, from 2004 to 2009, there were: Still, the number of deaths attributed annually to wrong-way crashes has fluctuated little it is typically between 300 and 400. There's a simple reason for that: "The vast majority of wrong-way collisions" are head-on, the NTSB noted. "But they are much more likely to result in fatal and serious injuries than are other types of highway accidents." "Wrong-way collisions occur relatively infrequently, accounting for only about 3 percent of accidents on high-speed divided highways," the report's authors wrote. Rare, deadly, drunkenĪ 2012 special investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board looked at wrong-way collisions. Gleason said within a few years, he survived two "scary moments," when wrong-way drunks passed him in the left lane on the Hutch and the Cross-County. "He said, 'Kid, when you're driving on the parkway on the midnight tour, especially, and there's nobody on the road you driving up and down the parkway there's no need to be flying up and down in the left lane.' He said 'Stay in the right lane because chances are if somebody is driving impaired the wrong way they're going to be coming at you in the left lane because they think they're in the right lane because they don't know they're on the wrong side of the road.'"
2009 drunk drivers killed drivers#
Talk of wrong-way drivers takes Gleason back to his first training officer who taught the new cop a valuable lesson. "With everybody basically having a cellphone, if someone spots it they're going to call immediately and hopefully we can get there and get to the person and intercept them," he said. Most often, people are driving impaired late at night, sharing the road with fewer cars, he said. Gleason said that several factors can reduce the number of fatalities in wrong-way incidents. The incidents range from a New York City woman who drove the wrong way while drunk on the Sprain in Greenburgh in April to a White Plains man with a blood-alcohol level at 0.22% - nearly three times the legal limit - arrested in Ardsley last September after driving north on the soutbound New York State Thruway. In the past 11 months, there have been at least a half-dozen wrong-way incidents on local roadways -with no fatalities. "You can have all the signage you want, but if somebody is that drunk it's not going to make a difference." Recent wrong-way drivers "Just about every case that we've experienced and that I've seen in 36 years has involved some type of impairment, whether drugs or alcohol," he said. Thomas Gleason, commissioner of the Westchester County Department of Public Safety, said he doesn't think the county's roads are more susceptible to wrong-way drivers. "As part of our investigation we went up and down the Taconic and every entrance is clearly marked, with 'do not enter, wrong way,' " Becerra said. "So signage was definitely there." A crash like that shines a spotlight on all future wrong-way crashes and arrests, the investigator said.īecerra, who grew up in Westchester, said he could not say whether the county's roads were more or less susceptible to wrong-way drivers.