Motorway chaos with vehicles driven wrong way 16 times a week as cases surge

13 August 2023 , 23:01

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Motorway chaos with vehicles driven wrong way 16 times a week as cases surge

Reports of vehicles driving the wrong way on England’s motorways have risen by 13%.

Some 872 incidents involving “oncoming vehicles” were reported on England’s motorways in the year to June 16, the equivalent of 16 times a week. That is up from 770 during the previous 12 months.

Three men were killed when a 15-year-old boy drove a stolen van in the wrong direction and crashed into a taxi on the M606 near Bradford, West Yorkshire in June 2022. Gloucestershire Constabulary also recently released footage of a four-vehicle crash caused by drunk driver Dorothy Denny, 65, going the wrong way for more than two miles on the M5 near Tewkesbury in October last year.

This car was left a mangled wreck when Dorothy Denny, 65, drove drunk for two miles in the wrong direction on the M5

Edmund King, president of the AA, said: “The increase in the number of vehicles being driven in the wrong direction on motorways is frightening and can be fatal. Various incidents seem to be clearly down to drunk drivers for which there is absolutely no excuse. These drunk drivers should not be on the roads.

“Generally the slip-road layout and signage is designed to ensure joining the motorway in the right direction is intuitive. However, sometimes drivers follow sat-nav directions without thinking, for example, to ‘take the third exit’, without actually checking the signage, and therefore they can make mistakes.”

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The M5 crash happened shortly after midnight with debris scattered across the carriageway

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, suggested the introduction of slip-road sensors that trigger roadside warnings as a way of cutting the number of wrong-way driving incidents. But Sheena Hague, National Highways director of road safety, said: “We design our motorways to be as intuitive as possible to reduce the likelihood of anyone driving the wrong way.”

Amy-Clare Martin