A wrong-way driver slammed head-on into another vehicle in the westbound lanes of I-526 on the downslope of the Don Holt Bridge early Sunday, triggering a third crash and leaving two people dead in North Charleston. A third driver was hospitalized, and the collision shut down the highway for hours during the early morning.
North Charleston police and emergency crews responded around 2:52 a.m. to the multi-vehicle collision, according to WCBD News 2. An early investigation found that a vehicle traveling the wrong way in the westbound lanes collided head-on with another vehicle before a third car crashed into the wreckage, according to the North Charleston Police CRIMEWATCH page.
The drivers of the wrong-way vehicle and the car it struck head-on were pronounced dead at the scene, per the same police account.
Lanes Shut Down for Hours
The crash forced the closure of all westbound lanes at Clements Ferry Road and temporarily shut down eastbound lanes near the scene as well, according to the CRIMEWATCH report. Westbound lanes of the Don Holt Bridge reopened after the roadway was closed for several hours early Sunday, as reported by Yahoo News.
The Charleston County Coroner's Office is assisting with the investigation and is expected to release the identities of those who died when appropriate, WCBD News 2 reports. North Charleston police have asked any witnesses or people with relevant information to come forward through the department's CrimeWatch page.
A Dangerous but Relatively Rare Pattern
Wrong-way collisions tend to be especially deadly because they are so often head-on impacts, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Nationally, the foundation found that fatal wrong-way crashes on divided highways killed an average of 430 people a year between 2010 and 2018, accounting for roughly 3.7 percent of all fatal crashes on those roadways.
The foundation's research also found that impairment plays an outsized role in these crashes: 60.1 percent of wrong-way drivers in fatal crashes had blood alcohol concentrations of 0.08 g/dL or higher, compared with just 11 percent of drivers traveling the correct direction. The report also found that older age increased the odds of being a wrong-way driver. None of those national factors have been tied to the North Charleston crash, and no cause for the wrong-way travel has been released.
No details about what led the vehicle onto the wrong side of the highway, nor any information about charges, had been released as of Monday. The investigation remains active, with the coroner's office expected to disclose the victims' identities once next-of-kin notifications are complete.
