How to curb the rising menace of wrong-way drivers in Southern Nevada

Just minutes into a new year on Wednesday, Nevada law enforcement received the first wrong-way driver call of 2020, when a motorist was spotted heading in the wrong direction on Interstate 11 near Boulder City.

While the incident didn’t lead to a crash, and officials weren’t able to locate the vehicle, it’s another reminder that efforts to prevent these events need to be accelerated. Nevada Highway Patrol Southern Command gets a wrong-way driver call at least once a day, said Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Jason Buratczuk.

The end of 2019 saw a string of wrong-way driving crashes, with one incident in December on Interstate 15 and Charleston Boulevard killing one person and shutting down the highway for several hours. It was one of 434 wrong-way driver reports in 2019.

Most cases of wrong-way drivers involve those driving under the influence, Buratczuk said. For example, the Nov. 14 incident that caused three separate crashes on northbound I-15 at Lake Mead Boulevard involved a suspected DUI wrong-way driver, who was also killed in the collision.

But Buratczuk said he’s seen instances where completely sober drivers who are from out of town and don’t understand the signage are also involved in wrong-way incidents. Medical episodes are also quite common, he added.

“One of the most common things we see is people having a diabetic episode,” he said. “When you run into someone driving who is having an episode, it’s exactly how an impaired driver would behave.”

One of the most concerning things about some of these wrong-way driving reports is that more and more are happening on well-lit highways near downtown and the Strip, he said.

“Generally we see them more on the outskirts of town where lighting isn’t as good,” he said “It’s shocking that the everyday motorist not giving it a second thought that they might be involved in a crash like that.”

There aren’t many tools traffic enforcers have to deter wrong-way drivers, other than citizen calls and signage, like the wrong-way detection signs on I-15 and Starr Avenue interchange that lights up so drivers can self-correct.

The Nevada Department of Transportation hopes to give traffic enforcers another tool this year with installation of new wrong-way driving signs at U.S. 95 and Durango Drive in northwest Las Vegas. The signs will have red flashing strobe lights to alert the driver they’re going the wrong way as well as a censored video camera to alert law enforcement to respond, NDOT spokesman Tony Illia said.

It has been in the planning stages for quite some time, he said. “This isn’t a response to the recent spike in wrong-way driving incidents. But the timing couldn’t be better as it turns out.”

The technology will be the first of its kind in Southern Nevada, Illia added. Similar signage has been tested in other nearby jurisdictions, including Northern Nevada and Arizona.

In 2018, the Arizona Department of Transportation installed wrong-way detection signs on the I-17 in Phoenix. The system has detected more than 90 wrong-way vehicles — mostly at freeway off ramps — since it became operational, officials said. While the signs aren’t physically capable of stopping wrong-way crashes, they have been instrumental in reducing fatal crashes by immediately alerting state troopers, officials said.

Illia said NDOT has considered testing a spike “strip” option, but there is a concern that spike strips on high-speed roadways are unsafe, and would further prevent law-enforcement and first responders from accessing wrong-way driving crashes.

As officials continue to test new methods to address the wrong-way driver problem, Buratczuk urges drivers to be mindful at night, buckle up and to stay in the right lane while driving, as many wrong-way drivers tend to travel in HOV or left lanes, thinking they’re cruising in the slow lane.