A 36-year-old man is dead, and the driver of the car he was riding in is hospitalized in serious condition after a wrong-way crash near Woodward Avenue and the Davison Freeway in Highland Park earlier this morning. Police say the driver was heading north when he veered into the southbound lanes and slammed a black Chevrolet Equinox into a pole, and that alcohol played a factor in the crash.
According to WXYZ Channel 7, police received a call about the crash around 5:30 a.m. The front-seat passenger, 36, died at the scene, while the driver was taken to a nearby hospital. Highland Park police told the station that alcohol was a factor in the wreck, though no charges have been publicly announced as of this reporting.
If Wayne County prosecutors do pursue charges, the driver could face significant exposure. Under Michigan Compiled Laws § 257.625(4), operating a vehicle while intoxicated and causing the death of another person, including a passenger, is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, fines of $2,500 to $10,000, and mandatory license revocation, according to Avanti Law Group. Michigan law also requires drivers involved in crashes causing death, injury, or significant property damage to report immediately to police, a process that generates an official UD-10 Traffic Crash Report, per the Conybeare Law Office.
A Dangerous Stretch of Roadway
Thursday's crash adds to a troubling history at the Woodward and Davison interchange. In February 2024, a driver was killed at the same interchange when a vehicle crashed through an overpass barrier, plunged onto the embankment below, and caught fire, with emergency responders finding the driver trapped inside the burning wreckage, as reported by FOX 2 Detroit.
More recently, in July, Michigan State Police responded to two simultaneous crashes on the eastbound Davison Freeway near Woodward, including a single-vehicle collision in which a car struck the divider wall, according to a local traffic account posted on Facebook by Marc D'Andre Live. Just south of the freeway near Hamilton Avenue, a Highland Park police officer was hospitalized in April after a patrol cruiser was struck at high speed by a driver participating in drag racing and stunt driving, with occupants of that vehicle fleeing on foot before a K-9 unit was deployed, per the Ratton Law Group.
The corridor's design is part of its history. Opened in 1942 and fully reconstructed in 1996, the Davison Freeway was built as the nation's first urban sunken expressway, engineered to carry heavy crosstown traffic beneath Woodward Avenue, according to Detroit Urbanism. Highland Park itself is a 2.97-square-mile enclave entirely surrounded by the city of Detroit, with Woodward Avenue serving as its main commercial and transit spine, as Hoodline has previously reported.
Crash Coincides With Statewide Sobriety Push
Thursday's fatal wreck fell squarely within Michigan's annual “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” enforcement campaign, which runs from August 14 through September 7 and increases patrols targeting impaired drivers ahead of Labor Day weekend, according to the State of Michigan. The timing underscores a stretch of the calendar when law enforcement statewide is specifically watching for the kind of alcohol-involved crash Highland Park police described.
The incident also comes amid broader, mixed trends in Michigan's roadway safety data. Statewide crash figures released this month by the Michigan State Police show alcohol-involved traffic fatalities dropped 14 percent, from 307 in 2024 to 264 in 2025, even as overall traffic crashes rose slightly to 290,221, according to CBS News Detroit. Separately, Michigan State Police recorded 24,690 drunk driving arrests statewide in 2025, continuing a decade-long decline from more than 35,000 arrests and 9,396 alcohol-related crashes logged in 2014, per Bridge Michigan.
It remains unclear whether Wayne County prosecutors will file OWI Causing Death charges against the hospitalized driver, a decision that would likely hinge on blood-alcohol toxicology results and an accident reconstruction report from Highland Park police. Hoodline previously covered a felony hit-and-run conviction stemming from another major Highland Park police investigation, underscoring the department's ongoing role in prosecuting serious traffic cases in the small city.
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