Chaos as cars driving on the wrong side of motorway rises sharply, with drivers urged to use common sense with sat-navs

14 August 2023, 08:15

The number of cars driven on the wrong side of motorways has risen by a "frightening" 13% in a year, with roads bosses urging drivers to use common sense behind the wheel.

National Highways figures show 872 incidents involving "oncoming vehicles" were reported on England's motorways in the year to June 19 - an average of more than 16 per week.

That is an increase on 770 over the previous year and represents an average of more than 16 every week.

Edmund King of the AA urged drivers to use common sense with their sat-navs.

He said: "Generally the slip-road layout and signage is designed to ensure joining the motorway in the right direction is intuitive.

"However, sometimes drivers follow sat-nav directions without thinking, for example, to ‘take the third exit’, without actually checking the signage, and therefore they can make mistakes."

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Mr King added: ""The increase in the number of vehicles being driven in the wrong direction on motorways is frightening and can be fatal.

"Various incidents seem to be clearly down to drunk drivers for which there is absolutely no excuse. These drunk drivers should not be on the roads.

One of the most serious incidents in recent years left three men dead when a stolen van was driven in the wrong direction by a 15-year-old boy and crashed into a taxi on the M606 near Bradford, West Yorkshire in June 2022.

Gloucestershire Constabulary recently released footage of a four-vehicle crash caused by a drunk woman driving the wrong way on the M5 near Tewkesbury for more than two miles in October last year.

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Sheena Hague, National Highways director of road safety, said: "Safety is our top priority and our traffic officers are called out to hundreds of thousands of incidents each year, including collisions, breakdowns and debris.

"Thankfully the number of reports of oncoming vehicles is low, however we treat them seriously by setting signals to warn and inform drivers for every report of a vehicle driving the wrong way on our motorways.

"We design our motorways to be as intuitive as possible to reduce the likelihood of anyone driving the wrong way."

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: "To most drivers it’s the stuff of nightmares to think that anyone could drive the wrong way down a motorway.

"Yet despite highway engineers’ best efforts to make it hard to mistake the off-ramp for a slip road, these numbers show there’s a lot more work to be done.

"Could more be done with technology – perhaps slip-road sensors that trigger roadside warnings? The ability of information to be fed to and from our increasingly connected and intelligent cars must create the opportunity for alerts to be generated and displayed within the vehicle."

Jo Shiner, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for roads policing, said: "It’s so important to be aware and alert when driving.

"Please keep any distractions to a minimum and concentrate on the signs and information provided for your safety."