Wrong-way driving is becoming more common and deadly in Mass. The state is racing to prevent it. – The Boston Globe

In each of the last two years, the state issued more than 500 citations to drivers on state highways, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and the Boston Harbor tunnels, a Globe analysis of state data found. And 2026 is on track to outpace those figures, with the state already logging nearly 270 citations by late June.

Wrong-way crashes tend to be at least 12 times deadlier than other car accidents, studies show, and their causes are frustratingly difficult to pin down to a single source.

Now state officials are rushing to implement a new $75 million program that includes a constellation of cameras, new road signs, and infrastructure improvements designed to prevent wrong-way collisions.

Massachusetts supercharged the effort after the death of state Trooper Kevin Trainor spurred calls for stronger action, including from Governor Maura Healey, said Jonathan Gulliver, a state undersecretary of transportation.

Gulliver said the Massachusetts Department of Transportation now expects to mount 430 detection cameras by the end of 2027. The system notifies wrong-way drivers with an audible alarm, flashing signs, and a spotlight, then pings law enforcement if a driver does not turn around.

The installation underway builds off a smaller pilot program at 16 Massachusetts locations that flagged roughly 300 wrong-way incidents since 2022.

“I’m not sure that [wrong-way crashes] happened more or less years ago, but I am certain we didn’t hear about them as much when they did,” Gulliver said.

In all, wrong-way crashes are among the “most preventable” roadway accidents but difficult to eliminate because they cannot be tracked cleanly to one source, said AAA spokesperson Mark Schieldrop.

Persistent speeding, distracting and impaired driving, and an aging population of drivers confused behind the wheel are the leading contributors to wrong-way citations, experts said. Nationally, six in 10 wrong-way crashes involve an alcohol-impaired driver.

And the dark of night can’t take all the blame, either: nearly 45 percent of crashes in Massachusetts occurred during daylight hours.

And though a wrong-way incident can be as simple as sliding into the unintended lane on a ramp, a single mistake against the flow of traffic is often dangerous.

In Massachusetts, at least 135 people have died in 5,506 wrong-way crashes on Massachusetts roads since 2018, according to AAA. That includes 22 deaths in 2025, the most in a single year during that time frame.

State officials here are focusing first on divided highways, where high-speed crashes can be especially deadly. MassDOT has identified 100 high-risk spots for wrong-way detection cameras, which include crash-prone intersections already equipped with cameras in Danvers, Auburn, Braintree, Fall River, and Wheatley.

Roughly 70 other roads at risk for wrong-way crashes may require larger reconstruction projects down the line, Gulliver said.

State leaders also intend to install clearer “wrong way” and “do not enter” signage, improved pavement markings, directional arrows, and better lighting at highway ramps and interchanges.

Legislation tucked into the state’s $63 billion budget plan, sent to the governor’s desk Wednesday, also proposes a study to improve roadway safety for drivers over 70, an expansion of law enforcement training, and completion of an analysis of documented incidents of wrong-way driving.

At a press conference following a vote on the budget amendment, Nicole Dailey lauded the efforts to address the issue after her son Christopher Dailey, an 18‑year‑old Gloucester High School graduate and hockey team captain, died in a wrong-way crash on Route 128 last summer.

“I don’t want any other community to have to go through this,” said Dailey. “It’s . . . senseless.”

Across the country, fatal wrong-way crashes doubled in the decade after 2014. Recent crashes in Massachusetts have involved drivers under the influence or allegedly fleeing the State Police, but many incidents can be traced back to disorientation and poor signage. Winding roads and complicated overpasses — specific to the older infrastructure and circuitous traffic patterns in Massachusetts — can add to the problem, Gulliver said.

In response, state officials sourced detection technology from TAPCO, a Wisconsin-based transportation product company. The cameras, mounted on street light signals, use artificial intelligence and heat detection to identify wrong-way drivers and differentiate them from pedestrians, birds, and other hazards, Gulliver said.

The software-based system costs $20,000 per camera to install, less than half the $70,000 price tag associated with cameras in the previous state pilot program. Those cameras use “loop detection” to manually identify wrong-way drivers, using wiring in the roads that recognizes passing vehicles above.

An average of two wrong-way cameras are installed each week. Some have proved to be fruitful immediately.

At the intersection of Routes 128 and 35 in Danvers, where officials connected a camera on June 16, “the same day we activated it, we caught a wrong-way driver,” Gulliver said.

In the next few years, state officials also hope to have a system that automatically pings roadside message boards and GPS systems to notify drivers about wrong-way vehicles.

Still, Massachusetts is moving more slowly than other states.

Rhode Island — a “leader” in wrong-way crash detection, Gulliver said — did not have a single wrong-way driving death in the decade after it began its analysis of collision hotspots at 200 ramps statewide in 2015. Ultimately, additional wrong-way signs, lower to the ground and with flashing lights, worked in tandem with other low-cost measures to warn over 1,000 vehicles that they need to turn around, state data show.

Eva Zymaris, a spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, said the installation of cameras bore similar results in that state, with 237 out of 400 planned locations operational to date.

Illuminated wrong-way signs flash when a driver is going the wrong way and pings two highway operations centers. That avoids the need for 911 calls that can otherwise pour in after an accident has already happened, Zymaris said.

In 2022, before the $81 million system was installed, 23 people died from wrong-way crashes in Connecticut. Preliminary data show there were four deaths in 2025.

“Seconds count here,” Zymaris said. “To be able to expedite that response time is huge to prevent crashes and fatalities.”

Now Vermont and Maine are also ramping up prevention efforts, after the number of wrong-way deaths rose in both states. And nationwide, states such as Ohio and Florida implemented detection technology roughly a decade ago. Nevada adopted harsher penalties for wrong-way driving in 2025.

Wrong-way crashes, typically the fault of an individual driver, can rarely be solved otherwise, said Peter Savolainen, a Michigan State University professor who studies road user behavior.

“A lot of times drivers don’t know until it’s too late that they’re going the wrong way,” he said. “So all states can do — and are doing — is try to make it more difficult for people to make that incorrect decision.”

Samantha J. Gross of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.