I-75 wrong-way detection now live at Bonita Beach and Alico

Wrong-way detection is now live at the I-75 interchanges with Bonita Beach Road and Alico Road in Lee County

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 21, 2026

A long exposure looking down a flat divided highway at night. Red tail light trails run away from the camera on the left carriageway and white headlight trails run toward it on the right, separated by a low guard rail, with a dark treeline on both verges and no legible sign, marking, number plate or landmark anywhere in the frame. Not a photograph of this event.

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: Fauzi Ahmad / Pexels

What it changes

Two more ramps on I-75 in Lee County now have machinery watching for a driver who has turned onto them the wrong way. WINK News reports the Florida Department of Transportation has switched the systems on at the Bonita Beach Road and Alico Road interchanges. The equipment is not subtle in what it does: sensors on the off-ramp pick up a vehicle travelling against the flow, warning signs begin flashing at that driver, and traffic management is alerted at the same time so somebody can respond while the vehicle is still on the ramp rather than after it has reached the main carriageway. That second half matters more than the flashing signs. A wrong-way driver on an interstate at night is often impaired or confused and may not read a sign at all, so the value of the system is partly that it puts a human dispatcher on notice within seconds. What is worth understanding is where this came from, because it was not a standalone safety installation. FDOT's own project record for this stretch, project 446344-1, covers I-75 from south of Bonita Beach Road to north of Alico Road, 13.6 miles through Bonita Springs, Estero and Fort Myers, at 22.9 million dollars. Its listed work type is milling and resurfacing, and the department now marks the project completed and its page archived. The detection equipment went in under that contract, which is visible on the department's own page in construction photographs of crews setting a wrong-way detection sign base. So the resurfacing is the reason the ramps were open to crews, and the detection is what residents are left with after the paving finished. Read that as a pattern rather than a one-off: safety technology on Florida interstates increasingly arrives attached to whatever resurfacing contract happens to be running, which is also why it appears in stretches rather than all at once. This is the second thread of this kind in Lee County this summer. In July this desk reported wrong-way detection going in at the I-75 interchange with Daniels Parkway, Exit 131, under a different and much larger project, a 42.8 million dollar reconstruction converting that interchange to a diverging diamond and running to summer 2028. That equipment was being installed. This equipment is running. Between them, three Lee County interchanges on I-75 are now either covered or being covered, at Bonita Beach Road, at Alico Road, which FDOT has identified as Exit 128, and at Daniels Parkway. Nothing published here says anything about the ramps in between, and a driver should not read three covered interchanges as a covered corridor. Be careful about the causal story, because the outlet and the department tell it differently. WINK frames the technology against two fatal wrong-way crashes on I-75 in recent months, one near Immokalee Road that killed a 96 year old Naples man and one in Charlotte County that killed a 21 year old woman. That is the outlet's framing, and it is the same framing it used on the Daniels Parkway story in July. FDOT's project documentation does not mention either crash. It describes the detection work as scheduled construction inside a resurfacing contract, and the department's public line is that the work is part of a statewide effort to reduce serious and deadly crashes rather than a response to any particular collision. Both things can be true at once, and neither version should be reported as the other. Finally, the practical part, which is the department's own advice and has not changed. A driver who meets a wrong-way vehicle, or who sees a wrong-way warning on an electronic message board over the interstate, should slow down, use caution, pull over and call 911. The message boards are worth taking literally now in a way they were not before, because on these two ramps there is something upstream actually generating that warning from a live detection rather than from a report phoned in some minutes earlier.

Wrong-way driver detection is now running at two Interstate 75 interchanges in Lee County, at Bonita Beach Road and at Alico Road, WINK News reported. Sensors on the off-ramps pick up a vehicle entering against the flow of traffic, warning signs begin flashing at that driver, and traffic management officials are alerted at the same time. Mariaregina Mendoza reported the activation for the outlet on August 14, and the report was updated on August 16.

The equipment did not arrive on its own. It went in under a resurfacing contract that the Florida Department of Transportation has now closed out.

That contract is FDOT project 446344-1, covering State Road 93, which is I-75, from south of Bonita Beach Road to north of Alico Road. The department's own project page gives the work type as milling and resurfacing, the length as 13.6 miles, the cost as 22.9 million dollars, and the affected cities as Bonita Springs, Estero and Fort Myers. Its status entry states that the project has been completed and that the page is now archived for reference.

The tie between the paving job and the detection equipment is visible on that same page, which carries construction photographs of crews installing a wrong-way detection sign base. FDOT's page does not itself name the two interchanges as the locations where the systems are now live. That is WINK's reporting, and it is carried here as such.

This is the second Lee County interchange project this summer to include the technology. In July this desk reported that FDOT was installing wrong-way detection at the I-75 interchange with Daniels Parkway, Exit 131, under a separate and much larger project, a 42.8 million dollar reconstruction converting that interchange to a diverging diamond and scheduled to run to summer 2028. That equipment was going in. The equipment at Bonita Beach Road and Alico Road is described as operating. FDOT has identified Alico Road as Exit 128. No exit number is given here for Bonita Beach Road because none was confirmed for this item.

WINK framed the installation against two fatal wrong-way crashes on I-75 in recent months, one near Immokalee Road that killed a 96 year old Naples man and one in Charlotte County that killed a 21 year old woman. That framing is the outlet's, and it is the same framing it applied to the Daniels Parkway story in July. FDOT's project documentation mentions neither crash and presents the detection work as scheduled construction, with the department describing its improvements as part of a statewide effort to reduce serious and deadly crashes.

The department's advice to drivers is unchanged. A driver who encounters a wrong-way vehicle, or who sees a wrong-way warning on an electronic message board, should slow down, use caution, pull over and call 911.

This item is a week behind the reporting that carried it, and that is stated rather than smoothed over. It is published because the equipment is installed and operating on a road Lee County residents drive daily, and because a check of this desk's archive found the activation had not been covered here.

Wrong-way detection is now live at the I-75 interchanges with Bonita Beach Road and Alico Road in Lee County

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