Every fall the traffic in the Valley changes character. The heat breaks, and the people who spend the cooler months here start arriving: seasonal residents, retirees, families visiting relatives, spring-training and golf travelers who come a little early. Many of them drive in. Many more rent a car at Sky Harbor.
That is good for Arizona. It also means that from now until spring, a larger share of the drivers on Phoenix freeways are reading interchanges they have never seen before, often in the dark.
Why this matters for wrong-way risk
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety's study of fatal wrong-way crashes on U.S. divided highways from 2014 through 2023 found that drivers living far from the crash location were at elevated risk, as were drivers operating vehicles registered to someone else. Older drivers were also overrepresented.
None of that means visitors are bad drivers. It means they are working harder. A local recognizes an interchange. A newcomer has to read it, in real time, and usually with a navigation app talking to them.
Phoenix has some features that make that reading harder for first-timers:
- Frontage roads running beside the freeway. On many corridors, a surface road parallels the freeway with its own one-way traffic and ramps feeding in and out. Turning onto the wrong one is an easy mistake.
- Long, fast loops. The Loop 101, 202, and 303 carry a lot of traffic at speed, and the decision points come quickly.
- Interchanges that look alike at night. In the dark, an off-ramp and an on-ramp can look like the same two lanes of pavement curving up toward the highway.
What visitors can do
If you are new to the Valley this season, a few habits go a long way:
Preview your regular routes in daylight. The drive from where you are staying to the grocery store, church, the golf course, or a relative's house is likely the one you will repeat all winter. Drive it once in daylight before you drive it at night.
Look at the interchange, not just the turn. Before a trip, spend thirty seconds on a map looking at where you will get on and off the freeway. Knowing that the on-ramp is on the far side of the overpass is the kind of detail that prevents a wrong turn.
Read signs rather than following the car ahead. Following feels safe in an unfamiliar place. It also hands your decisions to someone who may be just as lost.
Know what a warning looks like. Red reflectors on the pavement facing you, the backs of signs, or a red "WRONG WAY" or "DO NOT ENTER" sign mean stop now. If you see any of them, pull to the side, stop, and call 911.
Adjust the rental car before you leave the lot. Mirrors, seat, headlights, and phone mount. Small frictions take attention away from the road at exactly the wrong moment.
What locals can do
If you live here year-round, you have something visitors do not: a mental map. That makes you useful in two ways.
Brief your guests. When family arrives for the season, tell them which interchanges confuse people. Every community has a few. "When you come off the 101 at our exit, the on-ramp is right next to the off-ramp, so watch the signs" is a five-second sentence that could matter.
Leave room and stay alert at night. Wrong-way crashes concentrate between evening and early morning. On its wrong-way driving page, ADOT says three out of four wrong-way crashes happen between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. When you are driving in those hours, extra following distance and attention to the lanes ahead are worth it.
Know the move-right rule. If you see headlights coming toward you on a divided highway, slow down, steer away to the right when it is clear, get to a safe place, and call 911. Then tell your visitors the same thing.
The road is doing some of the work
Arizona has invested in infrastructure aimed at exactly this problem. ADOT's thermal-camera detection system on I-17 in Phoenix watches for wrong-way vehicles and, when it finds one, triggers flashing "Wrong Way" signs, alerts the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and posts warnings on overhead message boards. ADOT has extended the technology to the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway and Loop 303.
ADOT has also installed larger and lowered "Wrong Way" and "Do Not Enter" signs on ramps, along with arrows on off-ramps that have reflectors glowing red to a driver going the wrong way.
Those measures work on a first-time visitor the same way they work on a lifelong resident, which is the point. Still, they cover specific locations, and the rest of the network depends on drivers paying attention.
A seasonal habit worth starting
NMWWD was founded in Phoenix because wrong-way crashes here are not abstract. Visitor season is a good time to pass along the few facts that help: preview routes, read the signs, know what a warning looks like, and move right if you ever see headlights coming at you.
If you would like to help us spread that message to more drivers this winter, get involved or support the work.
Sources: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Fatal Wrong-Way Crashes on Divided Highways, United States, 2014–2023 · Arizona Department of Transportation — Wrong-Way Drivers · Arizona Department of Transportation — I-17 thermal-camera system