Arizona seeks to reduce wrong-way driving

In the classic film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Steve Martin and John Candy become reluctant travel companions fighting the holiday rush.

In one scene, the two find themselves barreling down the wrong way of a divided highway as two passersby attempt to warn them of their error.

Martin’s character tells Candy’s: “He says we’re going the wrong way.” To which Candy replies: “Oh, he’s drunk. How would he know where we’re going?”

Prescient, or maybe just art imitating life.

There’s an average of 22 wrong-way driving crashes on state highways each year, a recent study released by the Arizona Department of Transportation says. About eight of those wrecks result in fatalities.

The report laid the foundation for the state to establish a prototype for a system to minimize wrong-way driving.

The plan is to enhance in-pavement sensors on highways, currently used to detect traffic traveling in the right direction, to track vehicles driving the wrong way.

Ideally, the system would alert ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center and the Department of Public Safety of the vehicle’s location.

This, coupled with additional and newly configured signage, could help to minimize incidents of wrong-way driving — and ultimately reduce the number of fatalities.

For example, the ADOT report notes that low-mounted signs were installed at various California highway on- and off-ramps. Some locations saw wrong-way driving incidents go from 50 to 60 per month to between two and six incidents.

Similar signage could certainly be beneficial, as the report notes there have been nearly 250 wrong-way highway crashes over the past 10 years with 91 related deaths in Arizona.

As tragic as these incidents are, wrong-way driving accounts for a tiny fraction of highway accidents. State data show an average of nearly 120,000 automobile collisions occur each year. About 23,000 of those are on divided highways. Nearly 1,000 people in Arizona are killed in car crashes of all sorts each year.

But there’s another factor involved in the wrong-way crashes, which makes one wonder whether signage or notification systems would have any effect in reducing these incidents.

ADOT’s report on wrong-way driving shows that 65 percent of wrecks involved alcohol impairment. Some years, alcohol was a factor in more than three-quarters of accidents.

Alcohol was also a factor in 66 percent of the deadly wrong-way crashes.

That means as many as 60 of the 91 deaths resulting from wrong-way driving crashes might have been avoided if not for drinking and driving.

And it’s not just wrong-way driving where alcohol plays a major role. Drunk-driving fatalities across the country totaled more than 10,000 in 2013, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Annual Highway Statistics.

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And that total represents an improvement over a decade.

In 2003, for instance, more than 13,000 people died in drunk-driving wrecks.

The state’s efforts to improve safety and eliminate wrong-way driving incidents are certainly welcome, but Arizona needs to continue its effort to prevent impaired driving, a major cause in deadly wrong-way wrecks.

Down the road

The Regional Transportation Authority plans to officially celebrate the completion of Valencia Road improvements.

The completed section spans Wilmot Road to Alvernon Way and includes additional travel lanes, improved intersections and turn lanes, among other improvements.

Anyone who has driven that, and really any section of Valencia, knows the work was badly needed.

But there’s still more work to do. The city plans a lengthy pavement-preservation job along some of the remaining worst, most-rutted and potholed sections of Valencia. When that’s completed, it will really be a cause to celebrate.

CenturyLink continues relocation work of its communications infrastructure within the project limits of the city of Tucson Department of Transportation’s Downtown Links Phase III project,.

Beginning Monday, Nov. 30, westbound Toole Avenue will be reduced to one travel lane at Sixth Avenue to accommodate underground utility relocations.

Work will take place Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with occasional weekend and night work. The work is scheduled to be complete in mid-February.

The east-side pedestrian walkway through the Sixth Avenue underpass will be closed during this work.

Downtown Links Phase III — Church Avenue to Broadway — is a Regional Transportation Authority-funded project linking Barraza-Aviation Parkway and Interstate 10.

Reader question

Folks on the far northeast side near Sabino High School have asked Road Runner what’s going on along Harrison Road north of the Catalina Highway.

The Pima County Department of Transportation and the Regional Transportation Authority have started installing paved bike lanes along the east and west sides of Harrison from the Catalina Highway to north of Snyder Road at Sabino High School.

The work is scheduled to continue into the spring.