The fatal wrong-way crash in West Haven on Sunday brings the total up to seven fatalities so far this year on Connecticut highways.
That is the same number of wrong-way deaths in all of 2023. In 2022, there were the most wrong-way related deaths in recent years with 23 total.
The Connecticut Transportation Institute and Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center at UConn gets all of the toxicology reports from wrong-way crashes.
“Eighty to 90% of the wrong-way drivers have alcohol in their system. The vast majority of those have a BAC that is at .2, which is almost three times the legal limit. And a lot of those also have a combination of THC in their system as well. So. it looks like there's a lot of polydrug use in terms of combining both alcohol and THC,” said Eric Jackson, the executive director for the Connecticut Transportation Institute.
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But they can’t definitively say if THC impaired their driving because it stays in a person’s system much longer than alcohol, according to Jackson.
Recreational marijuana has been legal in neighboring states like Massachusetts for a few years and recreational sales started in Connecticut in January 2023.
Jackson also pointed out that the state’s highways haven’t dramatically changed over the years. But, the Connecticut Department of Transportation started installing additional wrong-way signs, flashing beacons and a camera system to alert drivers going the wrong way onto ramps.
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“We have seen footage of those drivers that are not impaired being able to recognize they are going the wrong way and turn around. Impaired driving, it makes this a very challenging obstacle to overcome simply because those drivers that are highly impaired, they're going to see those flashing lights and they're going to keep driving,” said Jackson.
What additional steps can the state take to prevent these wrong-way crashes?
“We're all kind of baffled on where we go and how we stop this. In a typical year, we would see maybe five or six crashes. It looks like this year, we're on track to where we were two years ago, were we'll see 13 or 14 with you know, 25 fatalities. So hopefully that's not the case. Hopefully we can get in front of this. But, it's definitely a challenge in terms of ways to prevent this from happening,” Jackson said.
