A man is in custody after the Arizona Department of Transportation’s thermal camera-based wrong-way vehicle detection system along Interstate 17 caught him driving his pickup truck the wrong way on the freeway early Monday morning.
No one was hurt as the vehicle traveled southbound on northbound I-17, primarily in the HOV lane, from Camelback Road until just before the “Stack” interchange with Interstate 10, where Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers took the driver into custody.
A thermal camera immediately detected the truck entering the northbound I-17 exit ramp at Camelback Road shortly after 3 a.m. and alerted the Arizona Department of Transportation’s traffic operations center staff as well as the AZDPS dispatch center. At the same time, ADOT activated wrong-way vehicle warnings on overhead freeway signs in the area.
Thermal cameras on the I-17 mainline at Indian School, Thomas and McDowell roads provided updates, with video, to ADOT and AZDPS as the vehicle proceeded southbound in the northbound lanes.
DPS troopers who were dispatched right after the first detection caught up with the driver south of McDowell Road.
So far, the $4 million I-17 system has recorded detections of more than 45 wrong-way vehicles within the project’s boundaries. Nearly all of the drivers in those incidents either “self-corrected” and turned around on an off-ramp or drove on the frontage road without entering the mainline lanes of I-17.