Two passengers died at an Ohio toll plaza, and the NTSB now wants the cash lanes shut

Two passengers in an SUV died on August 15, 2024, at the Swanton Township Toll Plaza on the Ohio Turnpike, and the National Transportation Safety Board has now concluded that the plaza’s own design helped cause the crash. In a September 16 announcement, the NTSB recommended that the turnpike’s operator permanently close its low-speed manual tolling lanes and move to fully electronic tolling.

The SUV’s driver and another passenger were seriously injured, as was the truck driver whose tractor-trailer the SUV struck. The board’s finding is aimed less at any one driver than at a layout that put fast and slow traffic side by side, and it arrives with a specific remedy attached, one that would change what drivers meet at the Swanton plaza and, if adopted system-wide, at every plaza on the road.

A plaza that put highway-speed lanes beside cash booths

The NTSB’s probable cause finding is that the toll plaza’s hybrid design, mixing high-speed electronic tolling with separated low-speed manual lanes, “created conditions encouraging sudden lane changes.” In the crash, the SUV moved out of a high-speed electronic lane toward the manual booths and slowed sharply, and a following truck-trailer hit it. Investigators said the speed difference that opened up between the two vehicles left the truck driver too little time to react, according to Transport Topics, which also reported that the SUV driver’s likely fatigue and the occupants’ lack of seat belts figured in the findings.

Video of the plaza made the design problem measurable. Over three weeks, investigators counted 1,099 similar last-minute lane changes, an average of 52 per day, and recorded vehicles crossing the marked separation between the two lane types. The Roads & Bridges account describes the layout that produced them: high-speed lanes directly adjacent to slow booths, which gave any driver who decided late that a manual booth was needed a strong pull toward cutting across.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy put the conclusion in one sentence: “This crash shows the deadly safety consequences of mixing high-speed electronic tolling with low-speed manual tolling lanes.”

The NTSB’s recommendations, and who received them

The cash lanes are what the NTSB calls “low-speed tolling lanes,” meaning the booths where drivers still pay by hand. The board’s recommendation to the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission is to close them permanently and implement fully electronic tolling at its toll plazas. It also asked the commission to evaluate whether more emergency access points are needed, after investigators found that responders had limited direct access to the plaza.

Five recommendations in total went to five recipients: the Federal Highway Administration, the state of Ohio, the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission, Springfield Township, and the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. For the federal agency, the board asked for guidance promoting the safety benefits of fully electronic tolling. It also reiterated a 2014 recommendation that Ohio strengthen seat belt enforcement, because the SUV’s occupants were unrestrained, as The Trucker summarized the board’s list.

The NTSB pointed to two neighbors as proof the change is workable. Illinois and Pennsylvania have both moved to fully electronic tolling on their stretches of Interstate 80, the corridor the Ohio Turnpike sits on between them.

The Turnpike’s answer and what stays undecided

The commission has not agreed to anything yet. It told local station 13abc that it would “carefully review” the recommendations, said it is “committed to protecting every traveler who uses the Ohio Turnpike,” and pointed to a fatal crash rate of 0.4 per 100 million vehicle miles, against a national average of 1.1. NTSB recommendations carry no legal force, and the agency depends on recipients to act on them; the board tracks each one and classifies it as open or closed depending on what the recipient does.

The commission’s own recent history shows why the answer is not a simple yes. In an earlier news release, it described a modernized system for the 241-mile road that pairs open road tolling for E-ZPass users with gated exits where cash and credit card customers can still pay, and it said E-ZPass customers save roughly a third on tolls compared with cash. The same release said nine toll plazas would stop collecting tolls and two new open road tolling plazas would open, and that license plate cameras would identify vehicles in E-ZPass-only lanes that lack a valid transponder. In other words, the road has already moved most of the way toward electronic collection; the NTSB is asking it to finish the job at the plazas where manual lanes remain. Closing the manual lanes would end the option that release deliberately preserved for drivers without a transponder, and it would raise the question of how those drivers are billed.

A wrongful-death lawsuit tied to the crash is pending, according to Transport Topics, which means the commission is weighing the NTSB’s findings while litigation is still under way. Whether it closes the Swanton lanes, or every manual lane on the road, is the decision the safety board has left to the commission.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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