Wisconsin coasts while other states speed up efforts to curb wrong-way driving (2024)

After a wrong-way crash killed four college students in Tampa, the state of Florida improved signs and pavement markings at nearly all freeway ramps and installed flashing alert systems at many of them.

When two sisters, also college students, died in a wrong-way crash in Phoenix, Arizona set up the nation’s first wrong-way detection system using thermal cameras on a 15-mile stretch of Interstate 17.

Iowa— where one wrong-way crash killed four people, including two Des Moines police officers— took a lower-tech approach. It strategically placed “do not enter” and “keep right” signs at confusing interchanges, reducing wrong-way driving incidents by 94%.

“Everybody should do this,” said Willy Sorenson, a traffic safety engineer with the Iowa Department of Transportation.

But the state hasn’t expanded the effort, despite the continuing problem, and it hasn’t evaluated the effectiveness of the alert systems. It has no program to identify hot spots for wrong-way driving, as many states do, and has taken fewer steps outside of Milwaukee County to deter it.

“We take wrong-way driving crashes very seriously,” said Bill McNary, state traffic engineer with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. But, “we have to be very careful and thrifty, and make sure that we’re getting the best bang for the buck.”

About 60% of wrong-way crashes nationally are caused by drunken driving, and about 20% involve older drivers, studies have found. But traffic engineers follow a “safe system approach” and try to make roadways less likely to enable wrong-way driving, even for impaired, elderly or confused motorists.

A “Wrong-Way Driving Solutions Handbook,” published last year by the National Academies of Sciences, which advises Congress, discusses ways states can improve roadways to help “achieve a significant reduction in the number of (wrong-way) crashes and fatalities.” The handbook is the result of a national meeting of transportation officials in 2022.

Making roadways safer is as important as encouraging people to drive more safely, said Andrea Bill, a traffic safety research project manager at UW-Madison's Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory.

“How do we make the system as forgiving as possible so that when someone does make a mistake, they don’t lose their life over it?” Bill said.

Signs and alerts are key

Wrong-way crashes have been a problem since the country’s interstate system was built in the 1950s, said Huaguo Zhou, a civil engineering professor at Auburn University in Alabama and leading researcher on the topic.

The next year, Zhou organized the first national summit on wrong-way driving. Officials from 23 states gathered at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where Zhou worked at the time, to share ways to prevent errant travel through engineering, education and law enforcement.

States started to reconfigure traffic signs, add more lines and arrows on pavement and make structural changes, such as building raised medians and islands to block improper turns.

Traffic andParking Control Co., or TAPCO, based in Brown Deer, near Milwaukee, offered a new kind of countermeasure. In 2012, it launched a radar system that detects wrong-way drivers, alerts them with flashing lights and notifies authorities if the drivers keep going. The system, typically placed on freeway exit ramps,reduces wrong-way driving incidents by 38%, a study in Texas found.

Recent versions of TAPCO’s system allow warnings to other motorists on message boards— and, in some places, to vehicles equipped with connected on-board units. In 2021, the company introduced LegendViz, LED lighting inside “wrong way” and “do not enter” signs that makes them easier to see at night, even before headlights shine on them.

TAPCO, one of several companies that now make such technology, has sold its alert systems in more than 30 states. A typical set-up costs roughly $100,000 to purchase and install, which can involve extending utilities and fiber optics.

“It is the fastest growing part of our business,” said Rob Prosser, chief revenue officer at TAPCO, which has more than 300 employees.

No dedicated budget

Wisconsin put up TAPCO alert systems on nine ramps in Milwaukee County in 2012, and added 11 in 2016. The 20 systems, which cost a total of $400,000 to install, cost about $70,000 a year to maintain, DOT officials said.They’re mostly at partial cloverleaf interchanges or other intersections with side-by-side on and off ramps. Two of the systems include LegendViz signs to increase visibility.

The state hasn’t studied the effectiveness of the systems, in part because officials lack comparison data from before they were installed, said Brian Roper, DOT’s southeast region operations chief. But the alert systems accounted for many of the 571 wrong-way driving events detected statewide last year, 289 of which led to warnings on digital message boards. Other detections come from 911 calls and law enforcement.

“We believe we’ve been able to make a dent and make things safer,” Roper said.

Statewide,DOT analyzes crashes for hot spots involving impaired drivers, hit-and-run drivers, teen drivers, older drivers, bicycles, pedestrians and other categories, but not for wrong-way driving, agency spokesperson John DesRivieres said.

Around the state, however, DOT has added extra “do not enter” or “wrong way” signs, placed reflector strips on sign posts or installed signs larger or lower than normal in places where wrong-way driving is thought to be a higher risk, McNary said. He said he couldn’t say how many such steps have been taken or provide a list of locations, but he said some are on highways 53, 151, 10 and 29.

There is no dedicated budget to address wrong-way driving in Wisconsin, and McNary said there are no plans to add more alert systems or change the state’s approach to signage. “We’re doing everything within the context of what a state agency is able to do,” he said.

DesRivieres said DOT has limited ability to curb impaired and reckless driving, which contributes to many wrong-way crashes. “There’s also an unsafe driving component," he said.

Prevention a priority in Florida

The state’s “heat maps” for wrong-way driving are highlighted in the National Academies handbook, as are similar efforts in Massachusetts and Texas.

Florida has upgraded signs and markings at 90% of the ramps, including painting colored interstate emblems beside pavement arrows to clarify directions. Officials have installed flashing alert systems, more than half of them made by TAPCO, at nearly 250 ramps, with 250 more under construction. Funding has been approved for another 250, and there's a proposal to fund 250 more.

Florida has spent $15 million on the improvements, with another $33 million planned, officials said. The state, known for having a large share of older residents, also attracts many tourists, whose unfamiliarity with roadways is another risk factor for wrong-way driving, experts say.

An increase in wrong-way crashes prompted Arizona in 2018 to set up a system on I-17 in Phoenix to detect and track wrong-way vehicles and alert authorities. The year before, a two-vehicle collision on the freeway killed a drunken, wrong-way driver and sisters ages 18 and 20.

More than 400 wrong-way vehicles have been detected by the system since 2018, and Arizona is expanding the technology to other freeways in Phoenix, said Doug Nintzel, spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Upsizing signs in Iowa

Sorensen devised a point system, highlighted in the national handbook, to rank Iowa’s 472 interchanges for risk of wrong-way driving. The method gives more points to intersections with a history of crashes, confusing geometry, more traffic and close proximity to bars.

At the top 165 locations, the state upgraded signage, using larger signs, adding “ramp” below “do not enter” signs and repositioning “do not enter” signs that had been slapped on the back of “stop” signs so motorists could better see them.

“Angle it to where you want to see it and then upsize,” Sorenson said last month during a federal Transportation Research Board webinar for transportation officials around the country.

Cameras at 62 of the 165 locations have allowed for comparisons of wrong-way driving incidents before and after the upgrades. At seven partial cloverleaf interchanges, where on and off ramps next to each other can be confusing, the improved signage reduced wrong-way driving 94%, Sorenson found.

Iowa hasallocated about $2.5 million to combat wrong-way driving, he said. Like Florida and Arizona, Iowa's percentage of fatal crashes from wrong-way driving was below the national average in 2013 to 2022, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Other states have been noted for their actions, including Rhode Island, which replaced green balls with green arrows in traffic signals near ramps where motorists should go straight and not turn. Connecticut last year passed a bill to beef up efforts after a state lawmaker died in a wrong-way crash.

Despite the initiatives, the number of people killed by wrong-way crashes is increasing. There have been more than 500 such deaths on divided highways annually in recent years, up from about 360 more than a decade ago. The recent annual toll exceeds 1,500 deaths when all types of roadways are included.

Zhou, lead author of the national handbook, said some states pay little attention to wrong-way driving and most of those working on it are investing relatively little, while population growth means more motorists.

“We need a consistent effort,” he said. “This problem is not a one-time fix.”