This summer, when a state trooper used his cruiser to intercept a motorist driving the wrong way on Interstate 40, highway officials already were developing a project aimed at reducing such crashes.
But the first attempt to award a contract this month for the project was deemed too costly and will be re-evaluated, a spokesman for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department said last week.
The project, which targets improvements at 285 on-ramps on selected interstate interchanges around the state, attracted interest from a single contractor.
The $3.8 million bid by Collins & Hermann Inc. of St. Louis was rejected after Highway Department officials concluded it was too costly.
One other contractor, Time Striping Inc. of Van Buren, expressed interest in the project, but it didn't submit a bid.
The department has no timetable on when it will put the project out for bid again, said Danny Straessle, the department spokesman.
Agency officials want to review the project to "see if there is anything that can be tweaked" to make it more affordable to pursue, he said.
The setback comes as a spike in wrong-way crashes was noted over the past two years, including the crash that left Trooper Roy Moomey badly hurt and the other driver, 24-year-old Matthew Choate of Fort Smith, dead.
Though they account for only 1 percent of fatalities nationwide -- averaging more than 300 deaths per year -- wrong-way collisions tend to be "severe events resulting in fatalities," according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
It isn't clear from the 63-page investigative file the state police compiled on the Moomey crash whether the department initiative could have prevented the accident.
But some elements of the crash match with circumstances likely to be found in other wrong-way crashes, according to state and national studies.
The Moomey-Choate crash occurred at 3:38 on the morning of Aug. 8.
Wrong-way collisions, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, occur mostly at night. A state Highway Department analysis of crashes covering 2009-2013, which examined 64 wrong-way crashes that resulted in 20 deaths, found that 70 percent occurred at night.
Including the Moomey-Choate crash, there have been at least four wrong-way accidents this year in the state.
The studies by the federal agency and the state agency also found that 60 percent of wrong-way crashes involved impaired drivers.
An autopsy showed that Choate tested negative for alcohol. He did have marijuana in his system.
The state police investigation reconstructed the last few hours of Choate's life beginning at noon a day earlier.
He spent the day and well into the night at his Fort Smith home, where he lived with his father. Between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., he played football with a friend. From 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., he visited with friends,
At 10:30 p.m., according to friends, he went to the Old Town Grain and Feed in Fort Smith for "karoake night."
At 1 a.m., he dropped a friend off at his home. Between 2 a.m.and 3 a.m., he tried to call a former girlfriend. Beginning at 2:20 a.m., he sent several texts to a friend.
Not included in the timeline was a statement from Choate's father, Michael Choate, who said that he was an early riser and was on his carport smoking a cigarette about 2:30 a.m. when his son stepped out and told him he was going to visit friends but didn't specify who or where.
"Choate said his son gave him a big hug and said I'm going to go dad," according to the statement.
At 3:27 a.m., 11 minutes before the crash, Matthew Choate tried to call his ex-girlfriend again, according to phone records the state police obtained and included in the timeline.
At 3:30 a.m., a vehicle was reported speeding west in the eastbound lane of I-40 east of Van Buren. Troop H dispatchers received three calls at 3:35 a.m. reporting a "red sports car" -- Choate was driving a 2012 Ford Focus -- westbound in the eastbound lanes traveling fast.
Other witnesses had reported that same car had been going east in the eastbound lanes but performed a U-turn and began traveling in the opposite direction.
Moomey was dispatched at 3:35 a.m., the same minute the calls were received. Moomey was in his cruiser at Arkansas 59 near I-40 in Van Buren assisting the Van Buren police with reports of vehicle break-ins.
Moomey said he got onto the interstate and turned on his lights and sirens to get other vehicles to pull over.
He continued east on I-40 and "it wasn't very long at all that he met headlights in his lane and he attempted an evasive maneuver to the right," according to the the statement he gave investigators from the hospital where he was recovering. "Moomey said that every move he made the other vehicle moved in the same direction.
"Moomey said he does not remember the impact."
The dispatcher at Troop H tried but was unable to contact Moomey at 3:38 a.m. Two minutes later, the Crawford County sheriff's office notified the Troop H dispatcher that Moomey had been involved in a head-on crash.
Sgt. Tim Carter, crash reconstruction coordinator for the Arkansas State Police, used measuring instruments to calculate that the Focus was traveling as fast as 110 mph in the moments before the crash, which occurred at mile marker 8 in Van Buren. Analysis of the onboard computer in either the Focus or the state police vehicle couldn't be done because of crash damage.
The Focus, its emergency lights inexplicably flashing, was shown to be traveling at 89 mph when its brakes began to be applied and the vehicle began skidding. Moomey's vehicle was traveling about 118 mph when it began skidding. It skidded for about 450 feet while the Focus skidded about 90 feet before impact, according to Carter's report.
Given that wrong-way crashes are so random and deadly, as Moomey's crash illustrates, the Highway Department decided to focus on low-cost improvements.
The spike in wrong-way crashes in the state also came during an annual review of all wrong-way crashes -- the result of a 2009 state law -- that includes checking crash sites and possible entry points for compliance with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a federal document that is considered the rule for the specifications regarding traffic-control devices that include pavement markings, signs and signals.
To reduce the likelihood of crashes involving vehicles entering a controlled-access road from the wrong direction, the document requires that:
• At least one " One Way" sign for each direction of travel on the crossroad is placed where the exit ramp intersects the crossroad.
• At least one " Do Not Enter" sign is "conspicuously placed near the downstream end of the exit ramp in positions appropriate for full view of a road user starting to enter wrongly from the crossroad."
• At least one " Wrong Way" sign shall be placed on the exit ramp facing a road user traveling in the wrong direction.
After crashes, the department often has replaced older signs with ones that are larger and brighter. But a problem the department has encountered is that rarely has it been able to determine at what location a wrong-way driver has entered a freeway; it only has the crash locations, according agency officials.
The department review concluded that other steps could be taken to provide more warning to motorists, with the focus on all exit ramps from freeways to be included, 729 by the department's count.
The proposed changes include:
• Replace Wrong Way, Do Not Enter and One Way signs at exit ramps with brighter sheeting and install them at a lower mounting height, which would allow them to be better illuminated by headlights and make them more visible at night. All told, those signs number 4,428, according to the department.
• Put down more noticeable wrong-way pavement arrows, directional arrows, yield lines and stop lines. A Virginia study showed that adding stop lines at exit ramps was "an effective wrong-way driving countermeasure," according to department documents.
• Install lines of ramp delineators -- reflectors on top of small poles -- to both sides of the off-ramps. Motorists going in the correct direction would see white delineators on the right and amber delineators on the left. Motorists going the wrong way would see red delineators on both sides of the ramp.
The improvements were targeted at 285 off-ramps, or almost half of the 528 off-ramps on Arkansas interstates, according to Straessle. The study had evaluated all off-ramps at the state's 264 interchanges and found "those locations in need of additional safety improvements," he said.
When the initiative was made public in February the estimated costs of the improvements was $2.8 million, or $1 million less than the bid the department received earlier this month.
The improvements could help older drivers who are "over-represented" in wrong-way crashes, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which recommends using signs, markings and lighting, such as what the state highway officials have proposed, to "make exit ramps readily distinguishable from entrance ramps."
At least two wrong-way crashes have occurred in Arkansas since Moomey's crash and within the past few months, and both involved older drivers.
On Sept. 8, Beningno Buenrostro, 75, of Fort Smith was killed when he collided with another vehicle while driving north in the southbound lanes of Interstate 540, according to the state police.
William Clem, 87, of Trumann was killed Oct. 20, when he drove in the wrong direction on Interstate 555 and collided with a pickup. The pickup driver also was killed.
A friend of Choate couldn't imagine that he would get turned around, telling a state police investigator that Choate knew "the local roads like the back of his hand."
But Carter, the state police crash reconstruction coordinator, said his report could tell investigators only so much.
"Reconstruction of crashes is an effort to answer questions concerning the crash and associated events," he wrote in his report. "Sometimes all of the questions are answered but most times they are not.
"One of the things I cannot answer is why Mr. Choate was traveling at such a high rate of speed and with his vehicles emergency flashers on. What I can say is that Mr. Choate was on the wrong side of a controlled access highway, resulting in a horribly violent crash."
Meanwhile, Moomey -- who risked his life to save others, according to Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune of Van Buren -- continues to recover from his injuries and is awaiting medical clearance to return to duty, said Bill Sadler, a state police spokesman.
SundayMonday on 11/13/2016