Interstate 84 recently has undergone a rash of crashes.
Connecticut state police say they see “a wide variety of reasons” for motor vehicle crashes, as does the state Department of Transportation — and it’s not just speeding — and state lawmakers have pushed measures on wrong-way driving and work zone safety (successfully) and blood alcohol level (not passed).
Below is a map showing nearly 10 years of fatal crashes on Interstate 84, and here’s a look at some of the recent crashes, not all fatal:
On Feb. 15, a Nissan traveling eastbound in the center lane in Southington veered into the left lane, hitting a BMW SUV, rolling over into the shoulder and hitting a bridge abutment. The driver of the SUV suffered serious injuries. The Nissan driver was not seriously hurt.
There was a wrong-way crash in Waterbury on Feb. 11, in which a Danbury woman died. The driver, who suffered life-threatening injuries, was heading west in the eastbound lanes in Danbury. He collided with another car before hitting a Chevy Tahoe head-on. The other drivers suffered minor injuries.
Another wrong-way crash on Feb. 10 in Manchester killed two Hartford women traveling west in the eastbound lane.
Also in Manchester, on Feb. 8, a driver veered out of the high-occupancy vehicle lane, hit a Hyundai, continued off the side of the road, came back across the highway and hit the median, killing the passenger, a 26-year-old from East Hartford.
Going back a few months, yet another wrong-way crash occurred Oct. 15 when a Middletown driver lost control of his Subaru Outback heading westbound in Farmington, crossed the median and headed eastbound. The Subaru hit three other cars. Four people, including a 4-year-old, ended up going to the hospital. There were no serious injuries.
And on Oct. 7 in East Hartford, a wrong-way driver hit a concrete barrier, got out of his car and was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver who was allegedly intoxicated.
‘It’s not just cars’
I-84 bisects the state diagonally, traveling 98 miles from Danbury through Hartford to Union (or vice versa). And like the other interstates — and just about any roadway in Connecticut — the problem with I-84 is not the asphalt, it’s those who drive on top of it, say those whose expertise is traffic.
“There’s some higher-profile crashes there — the tractor-trailer tipped over carrying all those eggs,” said Josh Morgan, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
That happened in Plainville on Feb. 8 and closed the highway for several hours.
“There was the wrong-way driver there a few weeks ago, but sadly, it’s what’s happening on all the interstates, because it’s really attributed to drivers,” Morgan said. “Is there something happening on 84? There is, just like 95 or 91 or ‘insert road name here.’ It’s just that cars are driving way too fast.
“It’s not just cars,” he said. “No, it’s the vehicles out there: motorcycles, truckers.
“It’s the trifecta though: speeding, distractions and impairment.”
While he said he can’t say what caused the tractor-trailer to tip over or why the drivers headed the wrong way on the highway, “that is what we’re seeing,” Morgan said. “And that’s where we have data that backs up that cars are driving faster today than they had been ever before in Connecticut.”
Besides speeding, “They’re playing with their phones,” Morgan said.
“And in a lot of cases people are driving impaired,” he said. “And that combination is leading to more crashes, more injuries and more fatalities.”
Speeding ‘numbers are off the chart’
The DOT relies on the state police to enforce speeding on the highways, but there can only be so many troopers with speed cameras on the side of the road.
“There’s only so much you can do to control speed on the interstate,” Morgan said. “That’s really why we partner with state police. Enforcement is generally the biggest deterrent on the highways, because we can’t put speed bumps or speed tables on the highway.”
He said the problem of speeding has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have speed sensors in several locations around Connecticut and just all the numbers are off the chart, and not just someone’s going 70 in a 65 (zone). It’s them going 85 plus,” he said.
“So that means that you have milliseconds to correct, so the faster you’re traveling, the more likely if there’s a crash that that’s going to cause a serious injury or fatality.”
State Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, co-chairwoman of the General Assembly’s Transportation Committee, said the panel has been looking at the problem of highway safety “holistically. We started to do that last year when we saw an increase in the number of crashes and fatalities coming out of 2022.”
One law that was passed was the wrong-way countermeasures bill, which includes flashing “wrong way” signs at highway entries.
“We’ve already seen that help,” she said. “We’re still seeing wrong-way crashes and I hope as we continue down this path of installing these countermeasures, we’ll see a reduction there.”
The committee also voted to lower the maximum blood alcohol level to drive from 0.08% to 0.05% but it didn’t pass the General Assembly.
Cohen said the committee is looking at an alternative, “which would be driving while ability impaired.
“This was something that other states have also taken a look at. Other states like New York have a driving while ability impaired law, and this is really getting at that 0.05 to 0.079, that in-between zone, because we do know that this is a contributing factor in a lot of our crashes.”
She said trying to crack down on the use of mobile devices is also on the agenda.
Cohen said “we really liked the results” of a work zone safety pilot project last year. “The committee is going to be looking together with DOT — this was a DOT proposal — to expand that further,” she said.
“These sorts of things get people to slow down on our highways, to really be tuned in to their driving to reduce the incidence of crashes, which is incredibly troubling right now,” she said.
A state police spokesman said in an email that there are “a wide variety of reasons” for motor vehicle crashes.
These include: “driver inattention, vehicles which are mechanically compromised, impaired drivers, drivers experiencing medical events or psychological crises, failure to maintain lane, traveling at speeds too fast for road conditions.”
Also, “following at an unsafe distance, reckless driving, unsafe lane changes, failure to yield, wrong-way drivers, debris in the roadway, etc.”
However, the spokesman said they could not speculate about any increase in crashes because each one “is investigated based upon the unique set of facts and circumstances surrounding the collision.”
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.—
