DALLAS — Driving home last week on the Dallas North Tollway, Jordann Rawls narrowly dodged a wrong-way driver.
"I think I was honestly about two seconds from having a head-on collision," she said. "It really was chance."
Police caught the driver who terrorized Rawls before he could hurt someone, but it's just among the latest in what has been a deadly trend on the tollway.
Statistics just released to News 8 reveal that there were 55 wrong-way drivers spotted on North Texas toll roads in 2009.
You never hear about most of these incidents, but seven of them triggered serious accidents.
After four people died over the course of seven months, the North Texas Tollway Authority promised changes — launching a task force and recently installing new flashing signs.
But other plans to deter misdirected drivers have hit snags.
Work to extend a median where two wrong-way drivers are thought to have entered the tollway has been delayed for months.
A plan to lower the height of "Do Not Enter" signs has also hit a snag.
"Six months is a lot of drivers, and a lot of chance, and lot of 'almost' cases," Rawls said.
Studies make it clear that there's no simple fix to this problem, especially when drunk drivers are largely to blame.
"We're taking this wrong way driver issue seriously," said NTTA spokeswoman Sherita Coffelt. "There's several things that have been implemented, but we're not stopping there — we have several things coming down the line."
The authority is testing to see whether the same technology they use to electronically collect tolls can also detect a wrong-way driver.
It spotted the car that nearly hit Jordann Rawls, but the system can't yet alert police.
Rawls remains so rattled by her experience that she's avoiding the tollway for now.
"It's pretty intimidating to know that just like that, I could have been wiped out," she said.
The NTTA maintains that its highway network is very safe, especially when you compare overall traffic accidents.
E-mail jbetz@wfaa.com
