Wisconsin worst in nation in fatal crashes involving wrong-way drivers (2024)

On Dec. 16, brothers Daniel and Fabian González treated their sisters Lilian and Daniela to dinner at Culver’s in Waupaca, as they did most Saturdays, a day off from their jobs milking cows at a dairy farm.

But this time, they didn’t make it home. Two miles from their home near Weyauwega, a pickup truck going the wrong way on Highway 10 hit their SUV head-on, killing Daniel, 25, Fabian, 23, Lilian, 14, and Daniela, 9.

The pickup driver, Scott Farmer, who survived, had a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit and a revoked license from four previous drunken driving convictions. Farmer, 48,of Neenah, had turned west into the eastbound lanes of the divided highway about a mile before the crash along a hilly curve, a surveillance camera showed.

“We feel very empty because in our house there aren’t any children,” Paulina González, the siblings’ mother, said in Spanish through her husband, Kurt Schilling, who interpreted.

It’s “your worst nightmare,” said Schilling, the children’s stepfather.

Wisconsin had the nation’s highest percentage of fatal crashes involving wrong-way drivers in 2013 to 2022, the most recent 10-year period available, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In the state, 9.1% of fatal crashes involved wrong-way drivers, compared to 3.5% nationally.

Partial cloverleaf interchanges, with on and off ramps next to each other, are the highway intersection most susceptible to drivers mistakenly enteringon exit ramps, experts say. At such interchanges, "it's hard to know which is the correct ramp," said Andrea Bill, a traffic safety research project manager at UW-Madison's Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory. "Here in Wisconsin, especially in our urban areas, we have a fair amount of them."

Many states have launched initiatives to identify wrong-way driving hotspots, improve signs and pavement markings, and redesign roadways. Some have installed pole-mounted radar systems that detect wrong-way drivers, alert the drivers with flashing lights, notify authorities if the drivers keep going and trigger overhead messages to warn other motorists.

In 2012,Wisconsin was among the first states to put up the wrong-way alert systems, using equipment made by Traffic and Parking Control Co., or TAPCO, based in Brown Deer, near Milwaukee. But today the systems remain only in Milwaukee County, at 20 locations, leaving other parts of the state without such improvements more vulnerable to wrong-way driving incidents.

Nationally, 60% of fatal wrong-way crashes involve alcohol-impaired drivers, according to AAA and NTSB.

Wisconsin is the only state that treats a first offense for drunken driving as a traffic ticket, not a crime. Only five states have more lenient drunken driving laws overall, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

AAA and MADD call for greater use of ignition interlock devices, which make drivers provide a breath sample below a set alcohol limit to start a vehicle. Unlike most states, Wisconsin doesn’t require the devices for all first offenders. That is a key reason MADD gives the state an F grade for its ignition interlock laws.

A life cut short

At her home in West Bend north of Milwaukee, Kristin Peterson sifts through photos of her son Grant. Snapshots show him fishing, playing on a basketball team, working the first day at his lineman apprentice job and jogging with his younger brother to help him finish a 5K.

In one photo, Kristin and her husband stand smiling with Grant and their six other children at church on Christmas Eve in 2022.

Four days later, Grant, 20,was killed in a wrong-way crash on I-90-94 near Wisconsin Dells. He was traveling east in a Toyota Camry with his older brother, Jared, and their friend, Isaiah Lubner, who was driving.

A Dodge Ram pickup truck driven by Kaden Churchill, 18, was going west in the eastbound lanes. The truck struck the car at 9:21 p.m. near exit 87, the way to Mt. Olympus Resort,as the car was in the left lane passing a semi-truck in the right lane, according to the Wisconsin State Patrol. Churchill, of Reedsburg,entered the freeway on the off ramp at exit 89, for Highway 23, the State Patrol said.

Churchill had a blood alcohol level of 0.168%, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08%. Officers found an open bottle of vodka in his truck and two 30-packs of beer in a snowbank near the driver’s door, according to the criminal complaint. He and his passenger, Brandon Schmidt, survived.

“There needs to be more awareness of how frequently these types of crashes happen," Kristin Peterson said. “Living in Wisconsin, it’s sometimes very difficult for us to see how widely accepted drinking alcohol is."

Churchill, after stopping at McDonald’s near the Walmart off Highway 23, mistakenly turned left on the exit ramp instead of going under the freeway and turning left on the entrance ramp, authorities said.

Before the exit ramp, a sign indicates no left turn. At the ramp entrance, there's a "do not enter" sign. Further up the ramp, "wrong way" signs stand on both sides of the pavement.

There is no flashing wrong-way alert system. The signs aren’t larger than required, lower than normal or internally lit to be more legible at night, measures taken in some places to try to prevent wrong-way driving.

Flashbacks linger

Jared Peterson and Lubner must live with the aftermath of the crash, including seeing Grant fatally injured.

“I think the flashbacks will never really leave my mind,” said Jared, 23.

Grant was the second-oldest of seven children in a tight-knit family home schooled by Kristin and active in their Lutheran church. Grant, in 4-H clubs growing up and on basketball, track and cross county teams in high school, worked at We Energies and planned to propose soon to his girlfriend of four years, his mother said.

Grant liked skiing, fishing, golfing and fixing up the truck he had just bought, said his father, David Peterson.

“He was Mr. Fun,” he said.

It was a ski trip, to Hyland Hills Ski Area in Bloomington, Minnesota, from which Grant, Jared and Lubner were returning to West Bend at the time of the crash.

Churchill, now 20, pleaded guilty to homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle. In September, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and five years of extended supervision.

Kristin Peterson said she tries to stay strong for her other children, the youngest of whom is 8. But she can’t bring herself to finish the design of Grant’s headstone at the cemetery where his remains are buried.

“It just makes it so final," she said.

Age possible factor

This past Nov. 29, Ying Vang, 34, of Oshkosh, was heading south on I-41 south of Fond du Lac in a Honda minivan when a Subaru SUV going north in the southbound lanes hit the minivan head-on, killing both drivers.

Grace Campagna, 82, of Campbellsport, was driving the SUV. The crash, at 6:23 p.m., happened near Lomira, about two miles north of rest stops on both sides of the freeway.

Blood alcohol test results on the drivers are still pending, but alcohol is not believed to be involved. Drivers older than 80 are particularly vulnerable to causing serious wrong-way driving crashes, researchers have found.

Some of Campagna’s family speculated online and in an interview that she got mixed up at one of the rest stops. Dodge County Sheriff Dave Schmidt said it’s not clear where the mistake occurred.

No ignition interlock

In Weyauwega, about 120 miles northeast of Madison, González and Schilling are trying to come to grips with the loss of the four children González brought from her native Ecuador when she moved to Wisconsin and in 2017 married Schilling. Five of her siblings already lived in the Waupaca area, where they run three dairy farms.

“Every night, every morning, it’s pain, on steroids, emotionally,” Schilling said of losing the children. A floor and wall coating salesman, he's also minister at Emmaus Lutheran Church southwest of Weyauwega.

“I always believe in mercy,” Schilling said. But he said Farmer, whose blood alcohol level was 0.346%, “didn’t respect the limits, the rights of others, the safety of others … That’s not OK.”

Farmer is in jail on six felony charges, including four counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle. He had alcohol-related driving convictions in 1999, 2001, 2006 and 2019, which led the state to revoke his license. He was required to use an ignition interlock but didn’t have one, said his attorney, John Miller Carroll.

“If he had an ignition interlock, this wouldn’t have happened,” Carroll said.

Shortly before the crash, a business security camera showed Farmer’s Chevrolet pick-up stopped at the corner of Highway 10 and Little River Road, south of Weyauwega. The truck took an immediate left, going west into the eastbound lanes, instead of crossing the median before turning left into the westbound lanes, according to the criminal complaint.

At the intersection, a sign says it’s a divided highway. Two "one-way" signs with arrows indicate which way to travel. Looking west on the eastbound lanes, a "do not enter" sign and a "wrong way" sign warn motorists. More of the signs appear near two other intersections before the site of the crash with the González's Nissan SUV, on a sloped curve known as “Wega Hill.”

It’s impossible to know if additional steps, like a flashing wrong-way alert system or larger, lower or brighter signs, would have captured the attention of the inebriated Farmer more than the standard signs.

But González and Schilling said more needs to be done to stop drunken driving and deter motorists from going the wrong way.

Daniel and Fabian were hard workers who played guitar and wooden flutes in a band, their parents said. Lilian, a freshman at Weyauwega-Freemont High School, wanted to be a teacher. Daniela, a fourth grader at the district’s elementary school, had started cheerleading.

Hundreds of people attended funerals for the four at the high school and at a local Catholic church, and two GoFundMe pages raised a total of more than $175,000 for the family. More than 1,000 people gathered for another ceremony in Saraguro, Ecuador, where the children were buried in January.

“They would have done great things in this world, and contributed to society in beautiful ways,” Schilling said. “They’re not going to ever have the chance to do that.”