A head-on collision on I-64 through the town of Barboursville, West Virginia (WV), claimed three lives. The fatal accident occurred at around 1 am on December 5, 2014, and police told reporters that the at-fault driver had traveled about two mile in the wrong direction before crashing close to the mall near Huntington. No one could explain why the woman who caused the deadly wreck had been driving east in the westbound lanes of the interstate.
The wrong-way driver died on the scene, as did the driver of the car she ran into. A passenger in the struck vehicle also lost his life after being transported to a nearby hospital with critical injuries. Police said postmortem tests for drugs and alcohol would need to be conducted to determine if intoxication played a role in causing the accident and deaths.
Few situations create a greater potential for a serious interstate accident than a car or truck going the wrong way on a highway. Reasons people drive into oncoming traffic include becoming lost and getting confused, but being drunk or high appears to make individuals particularly prone to mistaking an exit ramp for an on ramp. Impairment would also make a person less able to avoid a collision.
Whatever investigators find, my West Virginia wrongful death attorney colleagues and I know that the friends and families of the people killed in this Barboursville crash now face months or years of difficulty in coming to terms with their sudden and tragic losses. We send our deepest condolences out to them.
EJL