The Tuesday evening commute through Town and Country turned deadly when a wrong-way crash on eastbound Interstate 64 near the I-270 interchange killed one person and choked traffic down to a single left lane as emergency crews worked the scene.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol told First Alert 4 the crash happened at about 6:55 p.m. and involved two vehicles. The wrong-way driver was pronounced dead at the scene, while troopers and fire crews shut down most of the eastbound lanes near the I-270 interchange so investigators could document the wreckage and begin clearing the highway.
Wrong-way crashes are often deadly
Wrong-way collisions on high-speed divided highways are far more likely to be deadly because they frequently involve head-on impacts. National safety analyses estimate that wrong-way crashes cause roughly 350 to 360 deaths across the country each year and often involve alcohol or other forms of impairment, making them a focus of state safety programs, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Local work and countermeasures
Transportation officials have spent years studying wrong-way incidents and recommending countermeasures such as clearer and brighter signage, changes to ramp design and geometry, and detection systems that alert drivers and authorities, according to a national wrong-way countermeasures study from Enterprise.
MoDOT also has ongoing work on I-64 and the Route 141 interchange in Chesterfield and Town and Country aimed at improving safety and traffic flow, with construction and lane shifts that drivers are being warned to plan around, as detailed in recent I-64 lane shift coverage.
Investigation ongoing
The Missouri State Highway Patrol is leading the investigation and has not released the identities of those involved or any potential contributing factors, as reported by First Alert 4. Drivers were urged to monitor traffic updates and consider alternate routes while the scene was being cleared. Officials say more information will be released when it becomes available, and this story will be updated accordingly.
