FORT MYERS
Seeing a wrong-way driver coming straight at you is terrifying. However, new FDOT know-how is attempting to cease how far these drivers can get.
Whereas the know-how hasn’t been carried out in Southwest Florida but, they’ve executed some finding out lately throughout a bridge closure in Tampa.
FDOT simulated greater than 140 wrong-way drivers utilizing bikes, small and medium automobiles in addition to vehicles and vans. The digicam caught them each single time.
JoAnn Might is a Communications Specialist for District One with the Florida Division of Transportation.
“The Florida Division of Transportation, District One doesn’t have the identical know-how that’s being examined in D7. Our visitors engineers are reviewing the opportunity of putting in a digicam detection system for wrong-way driving at a number of off-ramps on I-75 which incorporates Lee and Collier County in SW Florida. Nevertheless, funding at the moment has not been recognized,” mentioned Might.
And the objective, after all, is safer roads. There have been a number of different kinds of enhancements in SWFL.
Kris Carson is a spokesperson for FDOT. “The faster we detect a wrong-way car, the faster FHP can dispatch a unit on the market and cease the particular person and hopefully save lives,” Carson.
The lastest FDOT numbers have been from 2015 however, there have been virtually 1,500 wrong-way crashes within the state of Florida the place 96 individuals have been killed and near 1,500 injured.
The cameras are just one method FDOT is utilizing to fight wrong-way driving.
Carson says Florida is a frontrunner within the nation. Different states ask about strategies getting used right here together with street markings and radar detection in indicators to warn drivers that they’re going the fallacious approach.
