High risk groups
Who cause the most wrong-way driving crashes?
Although wrong-way crashes happen in all age groups, the groups with the highest crash rates are the young inexperienced drivers and the elderly drivers. Alcohol is involved in many of the young driver crashes. They often deliberately break the law by reversing their driving direction to correct a previous error, such as just having missed an exit.
Alcohol hardly plays any part in the wrong-way driving of those aged 70 years and upwards. In the dark they often mistakenly drive up an exit road after having turned off too soon.
About 40% of all wrong-way driving crashes occur during daytime. During the hours of darkness, the share of wrong-way driving crashes in the total of all motorway crashes is 0.2% and during daylight hours 0.1%.
Men are not involved in wrong-way crashes more frequently than women.