CLEVELAND — An 85-year-old woman driving the wrong way on Interstate 480 caused a head-on crash early Monday morning.
The accident happened at 12:06 a.m. near the State Road exit, according to traffic camera video provided by ODOT in response to a public records request. The cars collided in the far left lane – the passing lane. Cleveland EMS said the damage was so severe that it was hard to tell, at first, which car was going the wrong way.
Both drivers were transported to MetroHealth's main campus. EMS initially said the 85-year-old was in serious condition. The other driver, a 25-year-old woman, was in critical condition. A police spokesman told News 5 that their injuries were not life-threatening, though.
Wrong-way crashes are extremely rare – but very dangerous.
Accidents like Monday’s, on a divided freeway, account for only 0.01% of all crashes in Ohio, according to ODOT.
“However, when they do occur, we know that they’re about 40 times more likely to be deadly than any other crash type. Which shouldn’t be a shock to anybody,” said Matt Bruning, ODOT’s press secretary. “I mean, you’ve got two vehicles coming at each other at, typically, highway speed. The results are typically not going to be very good.”
Last week, ODOT added new flashing, wrong-way detection signs on 25 exit ramps on Interstates 71 and 90 in Cuyahoga County. The state picked that corridor after studying the most common locations for wrong-way crashes. Officials also looked at the proximity of exit ramps to bars, since alcohol is often a factor in wrong-way accidents.
On the upgraded ramps, a wrong-way driver will immediately trigger flashing lights on “wrong way” and “do not enter” signs. The system also sends an alert – and a short video – to ODOT, which then notifies local law enforcement.
That new detection system isn’t available on 480. But ODOT installed warning signs and reflective arrows years ago on the 480 exit ramps.
The agency’s cameras captured the 85-year-old driver entering the freeway on the West 130th Street exit ramp, where she almost hit another car. In that case, both drivers swerved to the right, narrowly passing each other.
News 5 showed the video to Daniel Cox, a longtime driving instructor and the CEO of Heights Driving School, based in Mayfield Village. He said the near miss illustrates how you can avoid a crash if you’re paying close attention on the road.
“Whoever that was, and they know who they are out there, they saved themselves by immediately moving to the right,” Cox said of the other driver, who then paused on the ramp for about 20 seconds before moving on.
“Now they’re stunned, obviously,” he observed.
Cox teaches defensive driving techniques. He said there are a few key lessons: Move to the right if someone’s coming at you. Slow down. Make sure you’re always looking ahead so you have enough lead time to react. And pull off the road if necessary.
“You want to avoid a head-on collision, because with the most impact, that’s where the damage is gonna happen. … If you have an angled crash, that will lessen the impact to the occupants,” he said. “It may tear up the car more, but who cares!”
ODOT videos show that the 85-year-old driver traveled roughly four miles in the left lane before hitting the 25-year-old driver straight on.
Bruning, the ODOT press secretary, knows how jarring it can be to see a wrong-way driver on the freeway. It happened to him more than a decade ago when he was driving to an early-morning work shift near Columbus.
“And, sure enough, there’s a set of headlights coming at me,” he said. “And it took me a minute to figure, like, is that person really coming in my lane? You know, you’re not expecting to see that as a driver. I was able to avoid getting hit, and I called 911 – which is exactly what we want people to do … But it certainly was scary.”
He recommends avoiding the far left lane, particularly at night, since that's where most wrong-way crashes happen. Cox said the middle lanes are the safest to drive in, since you always have the option to move left or right.
Through Oct. 22, ODOT has counted 70 wrong-way crashes this year, resulting in 11 deaths and 18 serious injuries. There were 90 such crashes in 2023 and 105 in 2022, according to the agency’s data.
“These are preventable crashes,” Bruning said. “If we just get people to drive sober, that would solve the vast majority of them.”
One thing ODOT isn’t trying – but often gets asked about – is installing spike strips on exit ramps to damage the tires on cars going the wrong way. The devices are similar to what you see when leaving a car-rental lot.
Bruning said other states have studied spike strips and determined that they aren’t useful – and can even be dangerous – in high-speed situations. He passed along a report from the Texas Department of Transportation, which found that the spikes didn’t cause tires to deflate quickly enough to prevent wrong-way drivers from getting onto the freeway.
The spikes also were a hazard when it was raining, snowing or icy. They got slippery and stopped folding down properly, damaging cars pointed in the correct direction.
“The bottom line is that they just don’t work,” Bruning said. “They’re not made for highway traffic. They’re not made for the volumes of traffic that we see on our on and off ramps in the state of Ohio, especially in our urbanized areas. … So that is not something that we’re even considering. We’re more focused on things that we know will work.”
