Highways and wrong-way drivers are a deadly combination, but thankfully this story has a somewhat happy ending.
According to KSDK, Cody Gowler was traveling on I-55 in St. Louis County, Missouri, at approximately 2 pm when he noticed a modified Chevrolet Camaro traveling the wrong-way on the other side of the interstate. Shortly after Gowler began recording the video, the Camaro gets struck by an older Chevrolet Express.
Thankfully this wasn’t a head-on collision, but rather a glancing blow. This likely lessened the force of the impact, but both vehicles were significantly damaged.
In the case of the van, you can see the driver’s door pull away from the vehicle as the front and side glass shatters. The Camaro was also damaged as the hood crumples and the driver’s side mirror goes flying off the vehicle.
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It remains unclear why the Camaro driver was traveling the wrong-way, but the station reports he’s a 42-year-old so it’s unlikely he was confused which is the case of so many elderly wrong way drivers. Regardless of why this happened, Joseph Defan has reportedly been charged with multiple offences including “reckless driving, improper lane use, violation of a financial responsibility ordinance and driving without a proper license.”
While we see a lot of videos of wrong way drivers, a 2012 investigation into the issue by the National Transportation Safety Board found that “wrong-way collisions occur relatively infrequently.”
The agency said wrong-way drivers are only responsible for about 3 percent of accidents on high-speed divided highways, but they’re “much more likely to result in fatal and serious injuries than are other types of highway accidents.” In particular, the government cited a study which found that 22 percent of wrong-way collisions were fatal while just 0.3 percent of all highway accidents result in a fatality.