Fatal Wrong-Way Crashes on Divided Highways

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March 25th, 2021

Between 2004 and 2009, an average of 360 fatalities resulted from wrong-way driving crashes annually in the United States. Although relatively rare, wrong-way crashes are often severe and fatal as they are typically head-on collisions.

This brief quantifies the number of fatal wrong-way crashes and the number of people killed in these incidents from 2010–2018 using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Characteristics of wrong-way drivers were compared with those of “right-way” drivers in the same crashes to identify factors associated with increased odds of being a wrong-way driver.

Read the full research brief here.