COLUMBUS – Highway accidents involving wrong-way drivers are rare, but they are also deadly.
The Ohio Department of Transportation has begun to address the problem by installing the first system to detect and deter wrong-way drivers in Ohio along an 18-mile stretch of I-71 in Hamilton County.
The $1.3 million project involves 92 electronic signs and 82 detection devices at 23 locations from downtown Cincinnati to Fields-Ertel Road, an area which has seen an unusually high number of incidents, according to data based on 911 calls, wrong-way and alcohol crashes and traffic volumes, ODOT director Jack Marchbanks said.
While wrong way crashes made up only 0.01 percent of all crashes in Ohio last year, they are 40 times more likely to be deadly, according to ODOT.
While stand-alone devices have been tested on the exit from westbound I-670 to Neil Avenue in the Arena District (see video above) and in Cleveland, Marchbanks says this is the first system in the state using multiple detection devices.
When the system is activated, LED lights around the edge of “wrong way” and “do not enter” signs begin blinking and an alert is sent to the ODOT’s Traffic Management Center in Columbus.
“Not only do these devices add another layer to alert drivers that they’re driving in the wrong direction, they allow us to capture data about where these drivers are trying to enter our highways,” Marchbanks said.
ODOT has been targeting highway ramps in Franklin, Licking and 15 other Ohio counties where there are a high number of highway interchanges. Those counties have witnessed 82 percent of the wrong way crashes in Ohio over the past 10 years, Marchbanks said.