All motor vehicle accidents are scary to some degree. Generally speaking, the amount of fear that accident victims experience directly correlates with how sudden and unanticipated the collision is.

And what could be more unexpected than headlights coming right at you on an interstate at night?

One can only imagine how frightened the five occupants of a Chrysler 300 were on Sunday night. According to the Nevada Highway Patrol, the car was traveling north on Interstate 15 near Las Vegas Speedway about 10:30pm when a GMC Sierra driving the wrong way slammed into the car, then proceeded to be hit by an 18-wheeler. Four of the five people in the car were injured, but they were the lucky ones – because the wrong-way accident claimed the life of 29-year old Elvira Cortez.

The driver of the pickup truck and two occupants in the tractor-trailer were also taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. At this time, authorities do not know how the Sierra came to be driving on the wrong side of the interstate, though they mentioned that alcohol might have been a factor.

As a result of this head-on collision, the pickup truck driver likely faces a wrongful death lawsuit by Cortez’s family members, as well as possible personal injury lawsuits from the tractor-trailer driver, the passenger in the 18-wheeler, and the surviving occupants of the car. But no settlement amount will be able to scrub the terrifying memories of the wrong-way accident from the victims’ minds.