A crash made headlines in late July when Maryville graduate Anthony Swartz caused a head-on collision after driving the wrong way on I-40. His SUV collided with a tractor-trailer driven by Carroll Trent; the crash ignited the big rig’s hazardous chemical cargo, causing a fire that shut down the highway for nearly 10 hours. Both men were killed by the impact.

Recent, but not the first

According to police records examined by the Knoxville News Sentinel, this crash is the fifth head-on collision for this stretch of I-40 since March 2013. The cause of the wrong way travel is unknown, as is the point of entry on to the highway, though records indicate that alcohol was a factor in two of the crashes. The four-mile stretch of road does have a particularly high number of interchanges, a factor that can cause confusion even in unimpaired drivers.

The allegation that Swartz was playing the wildly popular augmented reality game Pokémon GO is being hotly contested; investigators have not found any evidence to support or rule out the theory. The allegation appears to have originated in a Facebook post by Trent’s daughter, who claimed that her father died because Swartz was distracted by the game.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported this:

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