A driver heading the wrong way on the Turner Turnpike early Saturday refused to pull over for flashing emergency lights, so an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper stopped the car himself — by ramming it with his cruiser and pinning it against a wall. Trooper Patrick Ball spotted the vehicle traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes near mile marker 161 at about 3:45 a.m., and the encounter ended with the driver hospitalized for evaluation and later booked on multiple charges, including DUI.
Ball activated his emergency lights to warn the oncoming driver, but the car kept coming at roughly 40 mph, according to KOKH. With the driver showing no sign of stopping, Ball used his own patrol vehicle to force the car to a halt. The station reports the driver's vehicle ended up pinned between Ball's cruiser and the wall in the resulting collision.
Authorities said the driver was taken to a hospital for evaluation afterward and later booked into jail on multiple charges, including driving under the influence. The outlet's report does not identify the driver or spell out the full list of charges beyond the DUI count, and it does not say what the hospital evaluation found.
OHP Warns That Missed Warning Signs Turn Deadly
In the aftermath, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol pointed to the broader danger wrong-way drivers pose, noting that alcohol impairs judgment and slows reaction time while making it harder for a driver to process information. The agency said impaired drivers can fail to recognize road signs, choose the correct lane, or notice warnings meant to prevent exactly this kind of collision — and when those cues go unnoticed, the report notes, the ability to avoid a crash drops sharply.
The patrol has also said it has been encountering wrong-way drivers on Oklahoma turnpikes with troubling frequency, according to KTUL. In a separate case on the same stretch of roadway, Trooper Preston Cox spotted a vehicle heading north in the southbound lanes of Interstate 35 before it continued the wrong way onto the Turner Turnpike; several motorists, including a semi-truck driver, had to take evasive action to avoid a head-on crash before Cox maneuvered across the median to intercept the car, the station reported.
A Pattern Across Oklahoma's Turnpikes
Other recent wrong-way incidents around the state show troopers and police using different tactics to end the danger. Oklahoma City police arrested a driver early one Monday after spotting the vehicle going the wrong way on the Kilpatrick Turnpike near 63rd Street around 1:30 a.m.; officers pursued the driver through the westbound lanes before making the arrest near MacArthur Boulevard, and KOCO reported it was not clear whether that driver was under the influence. In another case on the Creek Turnpike, authorities said no one was hurt when a trooper stopped a wrong-way driver, while on a different occasion Trooper Travis Sykes set up a rolling roadblock across all lanes near the Peoria/Elm exit after spotting a wrong-way vehicle, which struck his patrol car before coming to a stop, per the same outlet. A prior incident on the Kilpatrick Turnpike in July also ended with a trooper using a tactical vehicle intervention to stop a wrong-way driver who was then arrested for DUI, KTUL reported.
Oklahoma's DUI Death Toll Is Climbing as the National Rate Falls
The Turner Turnpike stop comes amid a troubling statewide trend. Oklahoma's alcohol-impaired traffic deaths rose 25.7% in 2024, climbing from 179 to 225, according to the Journal Record. That happened even as Oklahoma made 484.61 DUI arrests per 100,000 drivers that year, a rate higher than most states, the paper reported. Nationally, drunken-driving deaths moved in the opposite direction, falling 4.2% in 2024, from 12,429 to 11,904, while Oklahoma also recorded the nation's second-highest DUI road fatality rate at 8.77 deaths per 100,000 licensed drivers, per the Journal Record's reporting.
A federal highway safety report has flagged the possible upward trend as well, noting that Oklahoma plans to prioritize impaired driving as a high-priority safety area in its coming three-year highway safety plan. For now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has said that drinking-and-driving decisions affect everyone else on the road, and that troopers, families and other drivers all deserve to arrive safely.
