Officials seek ways to end state’s 19-year streak of roadway deaths
Standing in a steady rain in front of a field of 3,647 Texas flags outside Houston City Hall Thursday morning,Texas Transportation Commissioner Laura Ryan paused, needing a moment to move on.
Each flag, staked there by the Texas Department of Transportation, represented a father or daughter, spouse or friend killed on state roadways last year.
“They die silently and violently,” Ryan said, noting the numbness many drivers have to Texas leading the country in fatalities.
She stopped, steeled herself and then proceeded a bit choked up through her speech, marking the 19th anniversary of Texas’ last day without a death on its roads. That is 6,939 days of at least one highway death, and a total of nearly 67,000 since Nov 7, 2000.
“They are tough stories to hear but they are important for us to internalize,” Ryan said.
Houston, Harris County and state transportation officials are pledging more attention to the issue, which some consider a public health crisis in the Houston region. After sharp jumps in the number of roadway fatalities in the eight-county Houston region, deaths declined to 584 last year and are on pace for about the same number this year.
The goal for officials is a fast and drastic decline in deaths, improbable as it may sound in a state that averages almost 10 fatalities a day and a region among the nation’s deadliest.
“Unless we set the goal, we are not going to take the actions to do it,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
In August, after months of discussion with transportation and neighborhood groups, Turner signed an executive order committing the city to Vision Zero, a plan to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2030. The order established a committee to examine options for better sidewalk and street design, and make suggestions about how the city can improve engineering, enforcement of traffic laws and education of residents about roadway safety.
Reasons for roadway deaths run the gamut in the region, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of fatality data last year that found the metro region is the deadliest in the nation for preventable deaths.
Speeding and distraction from mobile phones often are related to severe wrecks, while the Houston area and Harris County lead the nation in drunken driving fatalities.
It is something Lucy Lugo Ekpanya knows all too well.
“In 2016, the father of my child and light of my life became a statistic,” she told the crowd outside City Hall.
Her husband, Pearland police officer Endy Ekpanya, was en route to a non-emergency call when his cruiser collided nearly head-on with a woman driving the wrong way on FM 518 the morning of July 12, 2016. The woman, Amber Willemsen, had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when she slammed into Ekpanya’s patrol car.
Willemsen was sentenced to 32 years in prison for vehicular manslaughter in 2017, and currently is in the Murray Unit of the state prison system in central Texas.
Lucy Ekpanya, meanwhile, rises daily to questions from a 5-yearold curious when his father will come home.
“I wake up with the reality my husband, my best friend isn’t here,” she said.
She tries to spice up chores for Julian Ekpanya around the house, telling the boy he has been assigned missions. Recently, he gave her one: “Can you go to heaven and bring Daddy home?”.
“I don’t want any more kids growing up and asking when their father is coming home,” she told the transportation officials, urging drivers to think about the ripple effects of roadway crashes.
Along with additional public awareness via events, state and local officials are rethinking their own policies, albeit slowly. In April, Texas Transportation Commission members, who committed to a goal of cutting roadway fatalities in half by 2035 and eliminate them by 2050, dedicated $600 million over the next two years in TxDOT’s budget specifically for safety improvements. Ryan said she hopes the first of those projects can start soon.
“A lot of them are known like rumble strips and median barriers,” she said.
Houston officials also are in the planning phases of a handful of projects, particularly those aimed at pedestrian safety around intersections with the most crosswalk-related crashes. City officials also have been supportive of lowering the prima facie speed — the limit of city streets without a speed limit sign and the de facto starting point for changing neighborhood street speeds — to 25 mph. Even slight decreases in traffic speed can make a difference, safety experts say.
Any changes in the law, however, require people to obey them, transportation officials said, adding that is why they are working to take messages to more community groups and people via educational campaigns, or Thursday’s marking of 19 years without a death-free day.
“People have to stop doing the behavior,” Ryan said. “We need them to listen… I don’t want to be here in a year having a 20th anniversary.”