More than 1,600 wrong-way driving incidents reported in Arizona
Dec 14, 2016, 9:40 AM | Updated: 11:22 am
(Twitter Photo/Arizona Department of Public Safety)
(Twitter Photo/Arizona Department of Public Safety)
PHOENIX — The Arizona Department of Public Safety has received more than 1,600 reports of a wrong-way driver this year, a spokesman said Monday.
Raul Garcia, public information officer for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, said, as of Monday, there have been over 1,600 wrong-way incidents reported to the agency since the beginning of the year.
Garcia did not have the information available to compare the number to other years.
Twenty-seven of those instances have had serious injury or death and more than 100 drivers involved in those incidents were arrested with suspicion of impairment.
“A very small percentage of that 1,600 has resulted in a crash, and in many instances, these people reorient themselves or get to where they are going and exit the highway,” Garcia said.
All throughout the year, there have been crashes caused by drivers in the Valley on the wrong side of the road. Some of them were deadly.
Garcia was speaking at the scene of a wrong-way collision near Chandler that left two dead and two other people in the hospital.
In November, two were killed driving the wrong way on the Loop 101 westbound. Later in the month, a crash on the Interstate 17 southbound caused by a wrong-way driver had two seriously injured.
A wrong-way driver died after smashing into a Greyhound bus in November as well, injuring 13.
