Houston exceeds the national average of traffic fatalities and serious crashes

Area's traffic crashes sobering

`Severe problem' highlighted by fatality statistics

The old jokes about Houston drivers have punch lines like "Red lights are optional" or "Just go 90 mph until you hear glass." Every day, the Houston area far exceeds the national average in the number of traffic fatalities and serious crashes.

The carnage contributes to skyrocketing medical costs and gives Harris County the most expensive auto insurance rates in Texas, making it no laughing matter for the region's transportation planners.

Harris County drivers put their lives at greater risk every time they get behind the wheel than drivers in any other major city because the area is growing and moving faster than roads can be improved or patrolled, according to local collision statistics.

And now drivers are crunching into the new MetroRail trains, putting Houston on course to top the national high for light rail collisions.

But whether by train or automobile, the Houston area far exceeds the national average in the number of serious traffic collisions. The carnage contributes to skyrocketing medical costs and gives Harris County the most expensive auto insurance rates in Texas.

"We lead the state in crashes no matter how you define them," said Ned Levine, transportation safety program coordinator for the Houston-Galveston Area Council. "We are among the worst in the country. I haven't found a metropolitan area that's higher than ours."

The HGAC has spent almost three years gathering collision statistics from numerous local, state and federal agencies. Among the findings:

·The eight-county Houston region has an average of 242 serious crashes every day.

·For every serious crash -- defined in Texas as involving a death, injury or property damage of at least $1,000 -- there are two to three times as many minor ones.

·Houston drivers are 2 1/2 times more likely to be hurt or killed in a traffic collision per mile traveled than the national average.

·Nearly 600 people a year die on the region's highways, and some 90,000 are injured.

The HGAC data goes through 2000, and the council now is crunching 2001 numbers.

Tom Lambert, Metropolitan Transit Authority police chief, said the string of wrecks along the Main Street light rail line, including one Saturday that injured two rail passengers, has begun to spark conversations about how to fix it. The numbers, he said, reflect that "you're seeing a lot of folks not following fundamental traffic-safety rules. That's something we collectively have to work on."


Education, engineering, enforcement critical

Saying definitively whether Houston is the nation's most dangerous big city to drive in is impossible. States tally crashes differently. Traffic statistics, however, are almost always calculated per capita or per miles traveled to account for population differences.

"If we had the same crash risk as Dallas/Fort Worth, we would have 15,000 fewer crashes a year," Levine said. "We have a very severe problem here."

Safety experts refer to the "three E's" that are critical for collision prevention: education, engineering and enforcement. Dave Willis, director of the Center for Transportation Safety at Texas A&M's Texas Transportation Institute, said Houston appears to be deficient in all three.

He and other experts cite four primary reasons drivers are more likely to get into a wreck here:

·Sprawl: Houston's population growth and suburban sprawl leads to more cars on the road, longer commutes and frequent congestion. The development has spread into areas not equipped for large traffic volumes, highway builders are unable to keep up with demand, and mass transit is inadequate. The area also has a large number of illegal immigrants with no driver's licenses or training.

"All that stuff really contributes to a much more dangerous driving environment, especially as you get into suburbia and exurbia," Willis said.

The sprawl has turned many roads designed for low rural traffic volumes, often with only one lane in each direction, into congested commuter arteries. Crash statistics show rural roads, with higher potential for head-on wrecks and intersection or driveway collisions, are more dangerous than the 10-lane limited-access superhighways crisscrossing the city.

On freeways, crashes are most often caused by gridlock. As traffic backs up, drivers' stress goes up, as does the number of rear-end collisions.

"Everyone in Houston is in such a dire hurry," said Sgt. Teresa Curry, a supervisor in the Houston Police Department's 2-year-old Traffic Enforcement Unit. "Nothing is close, and because they are in a hurry, they are willing to take that chance."

The Texas Department of Public Safety reports it is a statewide phenomenon.

"In the large metropolitan areas, people are in a big hurry to get where they are going, and they feel a lot of pressure to be places," said DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange. "They don't leave themselves enough time to get there, so they drive too fast and take a lot of risks that end up contributing to or causing wrecks."

Proponents of "smart growth" believe roads will be safer if future development is concentrated inside Loop 610, where dense, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods connected by mass transit would make it easy to move around without cars. Though Metro's first light rail line is actually contributing to the collision problem now, many see rail as one of the greatest ways in the future to reduce crash risk.

"Metro has set safety records with its bus fleet year after year and is one of the safest transit systems in the nation," said Metro Chairman David Wolff. "We'll continue to do whatever is necessary to make this the safest at-grade rail system in North America."

·Less investment: Houstonians have invested less in safety improvements than people elsewhere. That means dangerous elements persist, from tiny, hard-to-see traffic signals to streets that haven't been repaved in decades.

"It's an issue of a very large and growing population on an infrastructure that is at its capacity," said Gary Norman, spokesman for Houston's Department of Public Works and Engineering. "Really, there are only two things you can do: build more capacity or you get people to take advantage of public transportation to lessen the burden on the capacity."

Norman said that in the coming fiscal year, his department and Metro will work on the Regional Computerized Traffic Signal System and upgrade all other traffic lights not part of the Metro project. Better flow should make it less likely drivers will want to speed or run red lights, officials believe, and intersections will be safer when tiny, outdated signals are replaced with larger, state-of-the-art LED panels that are easier to see and burn out less frequently.

The Texas Department of Transportation's Houston District said it has 22 ongoing safety projects, among them adding paved shoulders and turn lanes, placing dedicated merge lanes at freeway connectors, constructing new overpasses, and replacing signs with a new material that is easier to see at night. The city and the Transportation Department also are banning trucks from the left lane of several freeways.

Alan Clark, the HGAC's chief transportation planner, said his agency's mapping of crash "hot spots" will, for the first time, help "identify places where there are deficiencies in the infrastructure that can help reduce the frequency and severity of crashes."

·Less enforcement: Many observers note the paucity of police officers patrolling Houston highways. HPD's Traffic Enforcement Unit has only 40 motorcycle officers. With two weekday shifts and after accounting for officers in court, on vacation or out sick, there might be 15 across the city during any given rush hour. On weekends, not a single motorcycle officer is on duty.

"There's no question Houston has got a crash problem," said David Saperstein, Mayor Bill White's traffic czar. "But there's also a major problem with enforcement. I think the mere fact that a red light to most people in Houston means `look both ways' is certainly a bad sign.

"The joke I've always heard is, `You just go 90 mph until you hear glass.' "


Motorcycle officers: Houston and L.A.

Saperstein points out there are more than 400 motorcycle officers in Los Angeles, a city with more people than Houston but covering 151 fewer square miles.

Houston police say they are doing the best they can given limited resources. Calls regarding crimes in progress and highly visible neighborhood patrols to prevent crime "certainly take priority over trying to catch the guy traveling 10 mph over the speed limit or who just ran the red light," Curry said, but added: "Knowing there's not a lot of enforcement, people are willing to take the chance to run that light if they figure nothing's going to happen to them anyway."

Saperstein is pushing for a major increase in traffic officers. Paying for them will be problematic, however, because the city faces a budget deficit of more than $150 million.

"We're looking to the federal government for help," he said.

Texas has only 41 troopers posted to Harris County. Mange said the state police are more useful in areas that don't have as many local officers.

Other cities have added traffic cameras to catch speeders and red-light runners. Although Metro supports the concept and would like to install such cameras along its light rail line, the Texas Legislature has rejected the idea in the past two sessions.

·Poor driver education: Lambert said part of the reason so many crashes are happening with Metro trains is that light rail is brand new to Houston and has existed in Texas only since 1996, when Dallas' system began operating.

The Texas Education Agency, which creates driver-training curriculum for schools and private companies, doesn't include instructions on how to move safely around light rail. The state driver's handbook, published by the DPS, also lacks such information.

Metro is working with Dallas Area Rapid Transit to get rail safety tips in front of drivers as both plan major system expansions in coming years.

"We want to see this as an opportunity, longer term, to change behavior," Lambert said. "Soon you're going to have rail operating throughout the entire region."

 

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