Video analysis of a single Ohio Turnpike toll plaza found 1,099 last-minute, potentially dangerous lane changes over three weeks, an average of 52 a day, according to a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation issued Sept. 16, 2026. The board tied that pattern directly to a crash that killed two people at the same plaza on Aug. 15, 2024, and is now urging Ohio to close the low-speed manual toll lanes that made the swerving possible.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy summed up the finding bluntly: “This crash shows the deadly safety consequences of mixing high-speed electronic tolling with low-speed manual tolling lanes.”
A pre-dawn lane change caused the fatal crash
At 5:29 a.m. on Aug. 15, 2024, a Toyota Highlander SUV traveling in the Swanton Township Toll Plaza’s left, high-speed electronic tolling lane suddenly slowed and cut across into the right lane to reach the manual toll booths, according to the NTSB’s investigation summary. A Mack combination truck-trailer struck the SUV from behind and overturned. Two SUV passengers died; the SUV’s driver, another passenger and the truck driver were seriously injured, and the crash also caused a sulfonic acid spill from the truck’s cargo, though no one was exposed to it.
Investigators pointed to driver fatigue-related reduced awareness and a lack of signage warning drivers about online toll-payment alternatives as contributing factors, on top of the lane layout itself. Separately, Ohio State Highway Patrol has said two more fatal crashes struck the same stretch of road in the roughly 90 minutes that followed, pushing the morning’s total to four deaths and at least 10 injuries, according to a Cleveland19 report — a separate toll from the two deaths the NTSB recommendation itself addresses.
Investigators counted 52 risky lane changes a day
To understand whether the SUV driver’s maneuver was a one-off mistake or a symptom of the plaza’s design, NTSB investigators reviewed three weeks of video from the site. They tallied 1,099 similar last-minute lane changes between the high-speed and low-speed sides of the plaza, an average of 52 per day, according to the board’s press release.
That volume of near-misses, captured at just one plaza over a matter of weeks, is what turned a single fatal crash into a systemic recommendation rather than a one-off finding blamed solely on the driver.
NTSB wants electronic-only tolling, not just at Swanton
The board issued nine numbered recommendations in total. The central one, H-26-16, calls on the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission to implement fully electronic high-speed tolling and permanently close low-speed manual lanes at four specified plazas, not just the one where the fatal crash happened. Companion recommendations, H-26-12 through H-26-14, call for evaluating and building additional emergency access points at toll plazas.
Two more recommendations go to the Federal Highway Administration: H-26-10 asks the agency to update the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the national rulebook for road signs and markings, to address signage for fully electronic tolling, and H-26-11 asks FHWA to distribute best-practice guidance on the same subject nationally. A final recommendation to the state of Ohio, H-26-15, reiterates a seatbelt-enforcement recommendation the board first issued in 2014, after noting that the SUV’s occupants were not belted.
Ohio is not being asked to do something untested. Pennsylvania and Illinois have already converted their own stretches of Interstate 80 to fully electronic tolling, removing the mixed high-speed and low-speed lane arrangement the NTSB now says contributed to the Swanton crash, according to the same Cleveland19 report. The board’s recommendation effectively asks Ohio to catch up to a standard two neighboring turnpike systems already meet.
The crash came four months after a $246 million toll overhaul
The Swanton plaza where the crash happened was not an old, unmodified booth. It was one of two brand-new mainline toll plazas the Ohio Turnpike built as part of a five-year, roughly $246.1 million modernization that launched April 10, 2024 — a project the turnpike’s own website describes as the largest construction effort in its history since the road opened in 1955. That overhaul cut the number of toll plazas systemwide from 31 to 24 and added dedicated 70-mph open-road lanes for electronic tolling alongside traditional gated cash lanes, according to the turnpike’s own project page.
In a statement responding to the NTSB findings, the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission extended sympathy to victims’ families, thanked investigators for a two-year inquiry and said it would review the recommendations, while pointing to a systemwide fatal crash rate of 0.4 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2025, well below the 1.1 national rate. Whether that broader safety record survives contact with a plaza design the commission finished building only months before the crash is now the NTSB’s open question for Ohio to answer.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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