While the state as a whole saw a decline in traffic fatalities in 2024, Houston experienced its greatest total ever.
According to data from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), 301 people lost their lives in traffic crashes in Houston last year. Compared to 2023, when there were 271 traffic fatalities in Houston, that represents a 29-death increase.
In 2021, the city set a record of 295 traffic fatalities.
Although Houston’s extensive road system contributes to traffic fatalities, speed is one of the main causes, according to Peter Eccles, director of policy and planning for LINK Houston, a local group that promotes equitable transportation solutions.
“Your risk of getting killed if you’re a pedestrian, at 40 MPH, is about nine out of 10 compared to, if you are hit at 20 MPH, it’s somewhere between 1 to 2 out of 10,” he stated. “There are several roads here. Even though they may be posted for 30 or 35 mph, people frequently go over that limit by an average of 40 to 45 mph.
Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston at the time, unveiled the Vision Zero action plan in November 2020 with the goal of eradicating traffic fatalities in the city by 2030. A nationwide cooperative network called Vision Zero aims to lower the number of road fatalities and injuries. The development of an online dashboard to monitor fatalities and major injuries around the city was one aspect of this effort.
The administration of Mayor John Whitmire said shortly after his inauguration in January 2024 that it would be refocusing the city’s Vision Zero program, making it “one of many tools” to enhance mobility. Whitmire also terminated the city’s sidewalk building mandate in specific locations at the end of the previous year.
Whitmire told Houston Public Media on Monday that his administration had not made any changes to road safety in the past year and that every traffic fatality was one too many.
“My administration’s highest priority is safety and we are committed to ensuring Houstonians’ safety,” he stated. “The Houston Police Department will keep up its efforts to prevent fatalities and works in conjunction with the Texas Department of Public Safety and other partners to enforce traffic laws. However, nothing that negatively impacted safety was altered or reversed by my government between 2023 and 2024.
According to Eccles, extrapolating advances in road safety from year-to-year patterns is not the ideal approach. Increasing driver and pedestrian safety can frequently take decades.
It will be a long game to track Houston’s hazardous road system. It’s a long game to tackle any city’s hazardous road system,” Eccles stated. “I’ll mention that Austin, which implemented Vision Zero ten years ago, has witnessed a drop in the number of traffic fatalities on state-owned roadways. It will require a sustained effort over time to achieve that.
According to Eccles, one of the most important components of lowering road fatalities is comprehensive data.
“One thing that Austin did and that Houston had done previously is develop a data analysis tool called the High Injury Network,” he stated. This pinpoints the tiny percentage of roadways that account for the majority of traffic fatalities and severe injuries. They determined that 60% of traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Houston happened on 6% of the city’s streets.
Cities can use this information to address the streets that are identified as the most unsafe, either by street design or direct enforcement. According to Eccles, one of Houston’s current issues is that the city no longer gathers that data with the same thoroughness as it used to.
“All of that data analysis is stalled,” he stated. “The last annual Vision Zero report is for 2022 and the Vision Zero dashboard has not been updated since May of last year.”
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Eccles added that while it wouldn’t happen right away, the city might restructure streets to encourage slower driving by taking use of ongoing infrastructure work.
“There was a comprehensive survey of the streets in many cities across the county and [it] noted that in all of them, streets that had 10- or 11-foot lanes had significantly lower crashes and lower fatality rates than streets with 12-foot lanes,” according to him. “There’s plenty of street projects that are currently in design where the city could choose to use these safety elements now.”
Eccles said that it’s critical to remind people that pedestrians always have the right-of-way, as they accounted for around one-third of last year’s fatalities.
“I think that there’s a lack of awareness on this topic,” he stated. “Whether or whether a crossing is designated, the space between two streets is always a legal crosswalk. Additionally, the Texas Transportation Code states that pedestrians have the right-of-way in crosswalks.