The red Ford minivan hurtled down the fast lane of the northbound Taconic State Parkway in Mount Pleasant — but it wasn'tgoing north.
Diane Schuler, a36-year-old Long Island mother of two, was at the wheel, drunk and high, headed south at 70 mph.
On that bright sunny Sunday 10 years ago, July 26, 2009, families were shattered in a fiery crash that killed eight,including four girls, ages 2 to 8.
FOR SUBSCRIBERS: A TACONIC CRASH TIMELINE: Tracing Diane Schuler's final hours
HEADLIGHTS HEADING YOUR WAY: What to do when faced with a wrong-way driver
At the time, the crash was the deadliest on a Westchester roadway in 75 years. Ten years later, nothing has happened to change that distinction.
There have been more wrong-way incidents in the decade since and, while the Taconic tragedy is still the deadliest, it still bears hallmarks of most wrong-way crashes: They are rare, they are often deadly and they are oftenfueled by alcohol.
Nobody could stop her
Diane Schuler was driving back from a weekend at a Sullivan County campground.
The Cablevision executiveandPTA mom, who by all appearances lived a happy life, had a lot in her system that day: the equivalent of 10 drinks, and marijuana that the coroner said had been smoked within an hour of her death.
Witnesses on the Taconic said she was driving "pin straight" at 70 mph in the fast lane, not swerving.
Schuler was not alone in that van, driving back to Long Island. With her were her children: Bryan, 5, and Erin, 2. And her brother’s kids: Emma Hance, 8; Alyson Hance, 7; and Katie Hance, 5.
She wasn’t alone on the Taconic, either. Frantic drivers flooded 911 dispatchers with reports of a red minivan heading the wrong way down the parkway. They had tried to stop her, they told investigators. They had honked their horns and flashed their lights.
Nothing worked.
Schuler drove nearly twomiles in the wrong direction until, at 1:35 p.m., she hit aSUV driven by Guy Bastardi of Yonkers. He and his dad, Michael, and their family friend, Daniel Longo, were heading to Yorktown Heights for a family Sunday pasta dinner with family.
They didnot make it.
The impact killed the Bastardis and Longo, Schuler and her daughter, and all three Hance sisters. The only survivor was 5-year-old Bryan Schuler, who sustained a severe brain injury.
Witnesses flew into action to pull Schuler and the kids from the burning van, which had rolled over as it went down an embankment onto agrassy median. It wasn't until days later that the toxicology report's stunning results were known.
The Taconic wrong-way crash has been the subject of two books, true-crime podcasts and a 2011HBO documentary that drew its title from the chilling words of 8-year-old Emma Hance: "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane," who had expressed concern about her aunt's condition in a cellphone call to her father shortly before the crash.
In the documentary, Schuler's husband steadfastly denied that his wife was capable of such poor decision-making, that she rarely drank and even more rarely smoked marijuana. There had to be another explanation, he said: a stroke triggered by a tooth abscess, perhaps.
There were lawsuits and later, sealed settlements against Schuler's estate.
Westchester's worst accident
The anniversary of Westchester County's worst crashraises the question: Are our highways more prone to wrong-way incidents?
New York State Police Investigator Joseph Becerra said a trooper's accident report doesn't include a"wrong-way box" to check, suggesting those accidents are too rare to warrant adesignation.
Becerra estimates he has investigated "probably half a dozen" wrong-way head-on crashes in his 34 years on the job. All of them, he said, involved alcohol.
"There were two that came to mind shortly after the Taconic incident where there were wrong-way drivers on the Taconic and both were intoxicated and both were charged with not only driving while intoxicated but also reckless endangerment," Becerra said.
The Taconic crash scene was unforgettable, he said.
"I've seen a lot of horrific things but because of all the children involved and the amount of fatalities it was one of the worst," Becerrasaid.
A crash like that shines a spotlight on all future wrong-way crashes and arrests, the investigator said.
Becerra, who grew up in Westchester, said he could not say whether the county's roads were more or less susceptible to wrong-way drivers. But he said the Taconic is well-marked.
"As part of our investigation we went up and down the Taconic and every entrance is clearly marked, with 'do not enter, wrong way,' [signs]" Becerra said."So signage was definitely there."
Thomas Gleason, commissioner of the Westchester County Department of Public Safety, said he doesn't think the county's roads are more susceptible to wrong-way drivers.
"Just about every case that we've experienced and that I've seen in 36 years has involved some type of impairment, whether drugs or alcohol," he said. "You can have all the signage you want, but if somebody is that drunk it's not going to make a difference."
Recent wrong-way drivers
In the past 11 months, there have been at least a half-dozen wrong-way incidents on local roadways —with no fatalities.
The incidents range from a New York City womanwhodrove the wrong way while drunk on the Sprain in Greenburgh in April to a White Plains man with a blood-alcohol level at 0.22% — nearly three times the legal limit— arrested in Ardsley last September after driving north on the soutbound New York State Thruway.
Gleason said that several factors can reduce the number of fatalities in wrong-way incidents.
Most often, people are driving impaired late at night, sharing the road withfewer cars, he said. And police have more help these days.
"With everybody basically having a cellphone, if someone spots it they're going to call immediately and hopefully we can get there and get to the person and intercept them," he said.
Talk of wrong-way drivers takes Gleason back to his first training officer who taught the new cop a valuable lesson.
"He said, 'Kid, when you're driving on the parkway on the midnight tour, especially, and there's nobody on the road you driving up and down the parkway there's no need to be flying up and down in the left lane.' He said 'Stay in the right lane because chances are if somebody is driving impaired the wrong way they're going to be coming at you in the leftlane because they think they're in the right lane because they don't know they're on the wrong side of the road.'"
Gleason said within a few years, he survived two "scary moments," when wrong-way drunks passed him in the left lane onthe Hutch and the Cross-County.
Rare, deadly, drunken
A 2012 special investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board looked at wrong-way collisions.
"Wrong-way collisions occur relatively infrequently, accounting for only about 3 percent of accidents on high-speed divided highways," the report's authors wrote. "But they are much more likely to result in fatal and serious injuries than are other types of highway accidents."
There's a simple reason for that:"The vast majority of wrong-way collisions" are head-on, the NTSB noted.
Still, the number of deaths attributed annually to wrong-way crashes has fluctuated little; it is typically between 300 and 400.
The NTSB reported that, from 2004 to 2009, there were:
- 218,813 fatal crashes in the U.S.;
- 54,789 fatal crashes on divided highways;
- 1,566 wrong-way fatal crashes on divided highways;
- 2,139 wrong way crash fatalities.
The report bore out what Becerra and Gleason have found in their years on their respective police forces: Wrong-way crashes more often than not involve alcohol.
The NTSB report concluded that "driving while impaired by alcohol is the primary cause of wrong-way driving collisions."
Of the 1,566 wrong-way fatal crashes in the six years covered by the 2012 report, 936 of them — 60 percent — "had indications of alcohol involvement." Nearly 60 percent of the cases involving alcohol had drivers with blood-alcohol levels at 0.15%or higher.
In New York, the level for intoxicated driving is 0.08%.
Schuler's level was 0.19%.
According to the Alcohol Help Center, at 0.15%, gross motor skills are impaired. A cellphone screen would appear blurry and judgment and perception would be severely impaired. Any high is replaced by agitation or depression.
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