What Oklahoma highway engineers are doing to prevent wrong-way crashes

The Oklahoman By Steve Lackmeyer August 12, 2011

It was late at night, and Laura Jones; her children, Zachary, 12, and Lili, 8; and the kids’ grandmother, Carol Jones Hickman, were traveling west on Interstate 40 heading to California when a drunken driver traveling in the wrong direction collided head-on into the family’s car.

The crash at 1:27 a.m. Oct. 17, 2020, sent the family’s Hyundai into the center median where the victims were trapped as the vehicle burst into flames. All four died, while the wrong-way driver, Ashley Louise Ricks, lived to confess to her actions in exchange for a manslaughter conviction.

Two years later, the Oklahoma State Department of Transportation is starting an experimental $2.3 million effort to place signs and warnings, some lit, to get the attention of drivers like Ricks before it’s too late to turn around.

VIew the full article: Oklahoman.com