Houston noticed its highest-ever variety of visitors fatalities in 2024, whereas the state as an entire noticed a lower.
A complete of 301 folks in Houston died final 12 months on account of a visitors crash, according to knowledge from the Texas Division of Transportation (TxDOT). That is a rise of 29 deaths in comparison with 2023, when there have been 271 visitors fatalities in Houston.
The town’s earlier document for visitors fatalities was 295 set in 2021.
Peter Eccles, the director of coverage and planning for LINK Houston — a neighborhood nonprofit advocating for equitable transportation choices — stated that though Houston’s huge community of roads performs a component, pace is among the largest elements in visitors fatalities.
“Your danger of getting killed if you happen to’re a pedestrian, at 40 MPH, is about 9 out of 10 in comparison with, if you’re hit at 20 MPH, it is someplace between 1 to 2 out of 10,” he stated. “We have now plenty of roads. They is likely to be signed for 30 or 35 MPH, however individuals are frequently exceeding that pace restrict by a mean journey of 40 to 45 MPH.”
In November 2020, then-Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner launched a “Imaginative and prescient Zero” motion plan to get rid of visitors fatalities within the metropolis by 2030. Imaginative and prescient Zero is a nationwide collaborative community to scale back visitors fatalities and accidents. A part of this initiative was the creation of an internet dashboard to trace severe accidents and deaths all through the town.
Shortly after Mayor John Whitmire took workplace in January 2024, his administration stated it could be deemphasizing the town’s Imaginative and prescient Zero initiative, making it “one in all many instruments” to enhance transportation. Towards the tip of final 12 months, Whitmire additionally ended the town’s sidewalk development requirement in sure areas.
In a Monday assertion to Houston Public Media, Whitmire stated any visitors fatality was one too many and that his administration had not modified something relating to visitors security inside the earlier 12 months.
“My administration’s highest precedence is security and we’re dedicated to making sure Houstonians’ security,” he stated. “The Houston Police Division collaborates with (Texas) DPS and different companions on visitors enforcement and can proceed to work to stop fatalities. Nevertheless, there may be nothing that my administration modified or undid between 2023 and 2024 that adversely affected security.”
Analyzing year-to-year traits is just not the easiest way to extrapolate highway security enhancements, Eccles stated. Enhancing security for pedestrians and drivers can typically be a decades-long course of.
“Monitoring Houston’s harmful highway community will likely be an extended sport. Tackling the harmful highway community of any metropolis is an extended sport,” Eccles stated. “I’ll be aware that in Austin, which launched Imaginative and prescient Zero a decade in the past, has seen their visitors fatality fee lower on city-owned streets. … That is actually what it is going to take — a protracted effort over time.”
Detailed knowledge is among the key components to lowering visitors deaths, Eccles stated.
“One factor that Austin did and that Houston had performed beforehand is develop an information evaluation instrument known as the Excessive Damage Community,” he stated. “This identifies the small fraction of streets which can be accountable for the majority of visitors deaths and severe accidents. In Houston, they recognized the 6% of streets the place 60% of visitors deaths and severe accidents occurred.”
Such knowledge permits cities to deal with, both through direct enforcement or road design, these specific streets which can be discovered to be essentially the most harmful. One of many issues for Houston proper now, Eccles stated, is that the town not collects that knowledge as rigorously because it as soon as did.
“All of that knowledge evaluation is stalled,” he stated. “The final annual Imaginative and prescient Zero report is for 2022 and the Imaginative and prescient Zero dashboard has not been up to date since Could of final 12 months.”
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Though it would not occur in a single day, Eccles stated the town may use ongoing infrastructure tasks as a possibility to revamp streets in order that they promote slower driving.
“There was a complete survey of the streets in lots of cities throughout the county and [it] famous that in all of them, streets that had 10- or 11-foot lanes had considerably decrease crashes and decrease fatality charges than streets with 12-foot lanes,” he stated. “There’s loads of road tasks which can be presently in design the place the town may select to make use of these security components now.”
With a few third of final 12 months’s fatalities being pedestrians, Eccles additionally stated you will need to remind the general public that pedestrians all the time have the right-of-way.
“I feel that there is a lack of know-how on this subject,” he stated. “Anytime there’s an intersection of two streets, the gap between these corners is a authorized crosswalk, whether or not it is marked or not. And in a crosswalk, the Texas Transportation Code says that you’ve the right-of-way as a pedestrian.”
