AAA says the number of fatal wrong-way crashes on Massachusetts highways is increasing and part of a nationwide trend.
Early Sunday morning, Ed Murray was driving on 1-93 in Boston when he saw a wrong-way driver approaching him in his lane.
“I saw in the distance a set of headlights aimed at me,” Murray said. “I looked and thought, ‘That guy can’t be in my lane.’ Then I realized as he was coming closer to me, quite fast, he was in fact in my lane.
Moments later, 28-year-old Riley Sergi of Haverhill was killed when the 81-year-old suspected wrong-way driver, Antone Carvalho of Somerset, slammed into his car.
Two other cars crashed into each other trying to avoid the wrong-way driver, four people from the same family were hospitalized.
The crash the latest in a series of fatal wrong way crashes in recent weeks.
Drivers tell me they are alarmed.
“As a driver in Massachusetts, are you concerned about wrong way drivers?” I asked Matt McCloat of Arlington.
“Absolutely,” he said. “The fact that it keeps happening as it has, is a real problem.”
“You and I could just be driving down North,” Mark Svizzero of Holbrook told me. “Somebody else could be driving South the wrong way and we really have no decision on that, whether we live or die.”
AAA Northeast tells Boston 25 that from 2018 to 2025, 51 people have been killed in wrong-way crashes in Massachusetts on divided highways.
AAA says most of the crashes are at night, many involve confused older drivers, and much of the time, a wrong-way driver is impaired.
And in almost every case, speed is a factor.
AAA is supporting Governor Maura Healey’s recently announced initiative to invest $75 million in advanced technology and better highway signs and markings to prevent wrong-way driving.
“These are crashes that are some of the worst that we on roadways because they tend to be head on collisions,” said Mark Schieldrop, AAA Northeast spokesperson
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