New intelligent signage is helping prevent wrong-way driving and keep pedestrians safer, even at midblock crossings.
The Illuminated Pedestrian Crossing Sign, announced Tuesday by Wisconsin-based TAPCO, is intended to make crosswalks safer, with a backlit LED device that turns on automatically at dusk. Like the company’s existing wrong-way driving devices deployed at off-ramps and other areas, the crosswalk signage can be solar-powered, eliminating the need for complicated and costly trenching.
“Most pedestrian deaths happen in the dark, at crossings where drivers don’t expect to stop,” said TAPCO President and CEO Eric Stangel, in a statement. “When a driver sees the crosswalk early, they slow down, they yield and the person crossing gets home safely. It’s the crash that never happened, that nobody ever hears about.”
The signs are paired with flashing beacons alerting drivers to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. Some 6,732 people were struck and killed by motorists on U.S. roadways in 2025, a 7 percent decline from the year before, according to data from the Governors Highway Safety Associationwhich released its Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State data earlier this summer.
In Massachusetts, where officials identified more than 500 “high-risk” locations, TAPCO mobile wrong-way signaling devices are going in, able to be set up quickly without the need for existing utilities or communications infrastructure.
The technology involves a solar-powered signage and alert system mounted on a trailer, which can be positioned near on- and off-ramps and other areas that have proven prone to wrong-way driving.
“It doesn’t require construction. It doesn’t require roadway closure to be able to implement this level of detection and let drivers know they’ve been going the wrong way. And it lets the [department of transportation] DOT know there’s an event they need to tend to,” said Alex Perry, TAPCO product owner and national wrong-way sales specialist.
The wrong-way driving alert systems, known as Wrong-Way Detection Trailersalert drivers when they are on a wrong-way path. If the driver continues on, an alert is generated by the TAPCO system and sent to the state DOT or another organization selected to receive it.
“They will get a notification that there is a wrong-way driver continuing on, and they are called to action to respond,” Perry said.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has deployed 14 of the trailers. States including Texas and Arkansas are also moving forward with deployments, company officials said.
Wrong-way driving incidents are relatively rare but tend to result in severe crashes, according to a 2026 research report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. From 2014 to 2023, there were 4,164 fatal wrong-way crashes on divided highways in the United States, resulting in 5,730 fatalities, the report found.
Many of those crashes involved drug or alcohol impairment, older drivers and other factors such as darkness, unfamiliarity with the area or drivers operating an unfamiliar vehicle.
“We’re making sure that even in dark situations, drivers understand that this is a wrong-way warning system,” Perry said, noting the Wrong-Way Detection Trailers provide a lighted warning sign to alert drivers.
The system includes cameras that provide a two-minute video to transportation safety officials, giving them added insight into the wrong-way incident.
“The video really gives us insights into driver behavior and then lets us be able to see where they came from, where they’re going,” Perry said.
Having access to more real-time and telematics data can be helpful not only in stopping a dangerous situation as it’s happening but also in better understanding the environment and the events leading up to a crash, said Anderson Abernathy, president and COO of Michelin Mobility Intelligence, North America, which provided financial support toward the GHSA report on pedestrian deaths.
“What’s the value of that? That predictive data. That’s the ability to use that data, the speeding events, the harsh braking events, those indicators of risk, they really help you find the hidden areas,” Abernathy said during a panel in July examining the latest national data around pedestrian and vehicle fatalities.
The notifications sent to highway patrol officers or others receiving wrong-way driving alerts can include images of the event in real time. The technology uses radar detection and can filter out traffic from surrounding travel lanes.
“And that ends up being very actionable for the DOT, because we are able to quickly identify the vehicle, the type of vehicle that it is, and making sure there’s enough information for the highway patrol, or whomever, can take action, and make sure they can stop that driver,” Perry said.
Source: www.govtech.com
