When you hear about wrong-way drivers on Michigan roads you’re often hearing the worst-case scenarios: big, often times deadly, crashes on the interstate.
To avoid the big crashes, you have to chip away at the problem where it starts — the mistakes that lead to people driving the wrong direction in the first place.
Whether it’s drunk driving, distracted driving, or drivers simply not realizing what they’re doing until it’s too late MDOT wants to find a fix. That’s why they recently began a program to work alongside Michigan State Police in the hopes of cutting down on wrong-way drivers by 20-percent in one calendar year. According to one MDOT traffic safety engineer, they receive as many as 15-20 reports of a wrong-way driver in the Metro Detroit region of MDOT each month.
“Most of them will self correct,” said Josh Carey. “The ones that don’t are either stopped by MSP, found on camera already crashed, or often they’re a drunk driver and when they do crash into another car it hits the media because it’s a fatal crash.”
MDOT engineers and Michigan State Police work from the same facility in Metro Detroit, so they’re often times tracking drivers in real-time when they receive reports of a wrong-way driver. Engineers are now working with MSP to work backwards and determine where drivers entered the interstate driving the wrong direction, and then reviewing each case to determine whether it’s a repeating issue in particular spots. The goal is to reduce the risk, or chance, that drivers ever enter the road driving the wrong direction.
“There’s all sorts of variables you can look at,” said Diane Cross. “At the end of the day we want them off the road. We want everybody safe and if we can we want to help alert drivers going the correct direction, hopefully we can keep them from being part of a deadly crash.”
If MDOT is aware of a wrong-way driver they can now update digital signs on that interstate to warn drivers going the correct direction of the potential wrong-way driver ahead.
In the meantime they’re changing their strategy on signs — Carey noted that they’ve lowered wrong-way driver signs to be closer to the road. They’ve also added red reflector panels to the sign posts in an attempt to draw more attention to the reflective surface, and ultimately the sign. That can be a major help for people who are driving drunk, or drowsy.
“Somebody who is drunk has a cone of vision similar to someone who is tired,” said Carey. “Their cone of vision is smaller so making signs larger, and closer to the road, making better pavement markings those are some of the things we’re already doing.”
There is also talk of re-designing some on/off ramps if they’re found to be spots that are involved in frequent wrong-way driving incidents, as well as, signs that light up when they detect a wrong-way driver.
If you’d like to see how the program works, MDOT has released a brief overview video that showcases how police and engineers can work together you can view it, here.
