Austin has already blown past its single-year record for murders this year, and now it appears the city may surpass another dubious record: roadway deaths.
“It’s very likely the number crashes that result in fatalities in Austin will be the highest on our city’s record,” Lewis Leff with the Austin Transportation Department told the Mobility Committee on Thursday. “We’re projecting that to exceed 105, maybe even approaching 110.”
The current single-year record for fatal crashes is 102 and was set back in 2015.
The majority of those deadly wrecks, however, are not happening on city-run streets, but rather on roadways that are operated by the Texas Department of Transportation, or “on-system roads,” such as I-35.
“There’s a difference of TxDOT being ‘on-system’ and the city’s ‘off-system,'” Leff said. “So, the data shows us that about two-thirds of fatalities that occur each year happen on-system. And there’s a pretty good rational explanation for that: the larger the roadways are, the higher speeds they are, the less traffic control that’s on there, you’re going to see more incidents like that because speed is the primary factor.”
YEARS OF LIFE LOST
One of the public health metrics the Austin Transportation Department uses is one that determines the cumulative number of years lost from people’s lives who have been involved in deadly crashes. According to the data shared by Leff, there were 3221 years of life lost from fatal crashes between January 1, 2021 and September 25, 2021.
“These are birthdays and holidays, other major events in life that will not be experienced, not only by them having lost their life, but by their family members and their friends and their colleagues that are missing them forever,” Leff said.
