The death this week of a driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 295 has led state transportation planners to refocus on ways to improve exit ramps and their warning signs so that drivers won’t get on highways going in the wrong direction.

Daniel Cressey Sr., 77, of Gorham was killed instantly Wednesday night when his northbound Saturn sedan hit a Lexus sport utility vehicle driven by Mary Warner, 58, of Holden in the southbound lanes of I-295 in Freeport.

Warner was in satisfactory condition Friday at Maine Medical Center in Portland. Both of her ankles and all of the ribs on her left side were broken in the crash. Her vehicle’s high center of gravity and extensive airbags, plus a last-second swerve to the right, probably saved her life, police said.

Ted Talbot, spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation, said that in recent weeks, planners had been brainstorming ways to improve highway exit ramps.

“Of course this latest accident is a tragedy, but we’ve been looking at this for a while,” he said. “It’s not a reaction to one incident. It’s more of a study of maybe what to do and a broad look at any ideas on the table.”

Wrong-way collisions on divided highways are rare, but when they happen, they are often fatal. When two vehicles going 65 mph collide head-on, it’s the equivalent of a car hitting a fixed object at 130 mph, said Trooper John Kyle, who is investigating Wednesday’s crash.

Police do not know precisely how Cressey came to be heading north in the southbound lanes of the interstate. He had told family members that he didn’t like driving at night. His family was unable to tell police why the Gorham resident was in Freeport, or where he was going.

Police thought initially that Cressey had mistakenly entered the southbound exit ramp at Mallett Drive, Exit 22, which is directly alongside the southbound entrance ramp.

A single “Do Not Enter” sign stands at the top of the ramp, and a red “Wrong Way” sign is posted partway down the ramp.

The ramps at Mallett Drive — like those at Bucknam Road in Falmouth — are alongside each other, so a simple misjudgment can put a driver on the wrong course.

As police investigated the crash, a witness came forward saying she had seen Cressey’s car while she was in the northbound lanes south of Exit 22 — which would mean he drove the wrong way on the interstate for at least four miles.

The woman told Trooper Kyle that she was driving north past the back side of the Shaw’s supermarket, just past Exit 20 and Desert Road, when she saw a car going north in the southbound lanes.

The woman accelerated, fearing that any collision might spill over into her lanes, and began flashing her high-beam headlights at oncoming drivers on the other side of the median.

“She counted at least eight or nine that avoided him. Every time a car approached, she’s flashing her lights, trying to get their attention,” Kyle said. Each one missed hitting the northbound car. “Eventually, she saw one that did” hit.

Exit 20 is configured differently from Exit 22.

At Exit 20, southbound interstate traffic exits onto the north side of Desert Road. The southbound entrance ramp is on the opposite side of the road.

Kyle said he is still working to re-create Cressey’s route and determine his destination.

Transportation officials say they have explored ways to improve warnings on exit ramps. The challenge is that most wrong-way drivers are not typical drivers.

“It’s not just that a driver simply took the wrong turn,” said Duane Brunell of the Department of Transportation’s safety office. “The average driver will quickly realize something is wrong here and quickly react to that. … If a driver is still on the road two to three miles down the road … something more is at play.”

Historically, most of the wrong-way drivers in Maine have been drunk or on drugs, elderly people, people with mental illness and people on medication.

Kyle said he will try to re-create the last 24 hours of Cressey’s life. Cressey was taking several medications, the trooper said, although it’s not clear whether that contributed to the crash.

He said Cressey had a doctor’s appointment scheduled in Portland earlier Wednesday but police have not yet determined whether he got to the doctor’s office.

From 2004 through 2008, there were 10 wrong-way fatalities on Maine roads, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That number was the fifth-lowest nationally. Not all were on interstates, and some crashes had multiple victims. Texas had the most in that period, 730.

Maine has had an average of one fatal wrong-way crash a year over the past decade, but there were none in 2011, according to a review of Maine State Police accident reports, Brunell said. Last year, Maine had a total 136 fatal crashes.

“Just like … any sort of a fatal crash, we want to take a close look at it,” he said of Wednesday’s accident. “Is there anything from an engineering point of view, location-specific or systemwide that’s in play?”

No single location is more of a problem than others, he said. Since 2003, only the town of York has had two wrong-way crashes.

“It largely originates with driver behavior or conditions,” Brunell said.

The signs on Maine’s exit ramps follow federal guidelines. Some states have sought to do more.

The transportation department in Texas found in a study that most wrong-way drivers are intoxicated, and that the elderly are over-represented relative to their proportion of all drivers. Most of the crashes happen at night, particularly after midnight.

The study suggested improvements, including lower “Wrong Way” and “Do Not Enter” signs, which would be illuminated better by headlights and more likely to be seen by drunken drivers. Another suggestion was embedding reflective wrong-way arrows in the pavement.

Others have suggested more elaborate steps, like one-way spike strips. However, they would leave a disabled car at the top of an exit ramp.

Another suggestion is flashing red lights activated by a vehicle going the wrong way on a ramp. Motion-activated lights might be effective, but they are cost-prohibitive, said Bill Eaton, head of Eaton Traffic Engineering in Topsham.

Some Southern states use raised reflectors imbedded in the highway, with a red side facing away from traffic. In Maine, Eaton said, those reflectors would quickly be damaged by snowplows.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com