Jefferson County Judge Luke Berger sounded exasperated last week during a hearing for a DUI and criminal endangerment case.
The defendant had been driving southbound in the northbound lane of I-15 near Elk Park. The incident occurred at about 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2020.
The defendant said the entrance to the freeway in Basin was not well marked.
Berger replied that being intoxicated didn’t help.
The judge then remarked that there had seemingly been more of these cases, where someone is driving the wrong way on the interstate.
“It’s concerning to me,” he said.
A look at cases in the past year supports this observation. From Jan. 1, 2020 to Jan. 1, 2021, there were seven cases that involved motorists driving in the wrong direction, or in the wrong lane, on public roads in the county. Of those, four were on I-15 and one on I-90. The other two were on Montana 282 and Picayune Road in Montana City. All but one involved alcohol.
Of the four on I-15, all occurred roughly within the last four months.
One of those involved a young woman who had driven more than 30 miles on the wrong side of I-15 — from Lincoln Road in Helena until Boulder Hill — before she was stopped. The incident, which occurred on Nov. 23, had generated twelve 911 calls about the wrong-way motorist, according to the criminal complaint.
The woman, who was also charged with a DUI, said she was “just out for a drive,” according to the complaint.
The most recent, which occurred on Jan. 1 at 2 a.m. on I-15 near Montana City, includes a police dashcam recording showing two vehicles having to pass or swerve to avoid the wrong-way truck.
In 2019, there were three cases of motorists traveling in the wrong lane on the interstate, with two in July and one in May. All involved alcohol.
There were no one-way drivers in Jefferson County in 2018, according to court records.
Wrong way driving on highways was the subject of a special investigative report by the National Transportation Safety Board in 2012.
The report concluded that, although rare, wrong-way collisions tend to be severe and result in fatalities, averaging more than 300 a year, a number that has remained fairly unchanged. Most occur at night and on weekends and the primary cause of wrong-way accidents was alcohol. Drivers over the age of 70 were also over-represented in fatal wrong-way collisions, and several reasons were suggested, such as declines in vision, memory and perception, as well as dementia, according to the report.
In some states, changing the design of interchanges has been effective on reducing wrong-way entrances onto highways. However, most of the methods available to stop wrong-way drivers are risky and can put law enforcement and other motorists in danger, according to the report.
One solution could be navigational systems that alert a driver that he or she is going the wrong way, but that depends upon consistent messaging by the provider, according to the report.
The Montana Highway Patrol compiles information concerning fatalities in the state, such whether speed, alcohol or drugs were involved, but does not include a category for wrong-way driving.
However, alcohol was suspected as contributing to 43% of the crashes in 2020 in Montana and 43.5% of the fatalities, according to the fatality crash report.
During the Feb. 3 hearing, Berger admonished the defendant.
The way these cases go is that the wrong way driver typically survives, but ends up killing a family of five, he said.
The defendant was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended, and credited for two days served, as well as probation — all to be served following a current sentence for another charge.
