Drivers in Houston, Harris County, and anywhere in Texas drive on some of the deadliest roads in the country. Texas has always had a serious problem with traffic fatalities, but fatal accidents have actually increased over the past five years. Nowhere are drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists more at risk than when passing through an intersection.
Sadly, in 2013, Houston was named the #1 most dangerous city in the country for red-light accidents. Between 2004 and 2013, 181 people died in Houston intersections from drivers running red lights. That figure only includes these types of accidents, just one common cause of fatal traffic accidents in Harris County.
Many of the most dangerous roads to drive in Texas are right here in Houston. In fact, according to the Houston Chronicle, Houston drivers and pedestrians are 40% more likely to die on the road than drivers in Los Angeles.
In 2014, KHOU put together a list of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the Houston area (SOURCE). All of those dangerous intersections involved interstates or highways, but Houston metro streets are extremely dangerous as well. In the two years since the KHOU report was created, we can also add the following intersections to the list of the most dangerous roads in Houston and Harris County.
In March 2016, a public outcry occurred after a grandmother was killed trying to cross a Sunnyside pedestrian crossing. The motorist-pedestrian intersection in Sunnyside goes across Cullen Boulevard near Wenda Street, and Sunnyside residents had been asking the city for a stoplight there for years. Thanks to another KHOU report, the city may finally do something about the Cullen intersection, but it will, unfortunately, be too late for the people who have been killed or injured while trying to cross this dangerous street.
“This is like the Indianapolis 500 during the day,” resident Terry Duhon told KHOU. “Like a race track.”
So far in 2016, according to reports from Accident Data Center, there have also been two fatalities on Louetta Road. In March, there were two separate fatal accidents on West Mount Houston Road in a single weekend, including an accident where a 10-year-old child was killed when his family’s minivan was struck. It is not just metro roads and intersections that you need to watch out for either. FM 1960 has been the site of a number of fatal car and pedestrian accidents over the last six months.
In one typical accident on FM 1960 in Huffman, police reported that a bicyclist near the FM 1960 bridge at East Lake Houston Parkway made an unsafe turn across several lanes of traffic when he was struck and killed by a driver.
It is only May, and already Houston has seen far too many preventable traffic deaths, a trend that is likely to continue in the years to come. In addition to roads and intersections like FM 1960, Louetta Road, and the Cullen Boulevard pedestrian crossing, here’s the original KHOU list of Houston’s deadliest intersections:
- Beltway 8 and Genoa Red Bluff Road
- SH-249 and FM 2920
- S. Route 90 Alt. and Beltway 8
- Louetta Rd. and I-45
- FM 1093 and Beltway 8
- Westheimer and Highway 6
- Highway 6 and FM 529
- Highway 59 and FM 1960
- Highway 225 and Beltway 8
- 610 and Wallisville Road
If you or someone in your family was injured in a car accident in Houston or Harris County, then you deserve an experienced personal injury attorney to hear your side of the story. The car accident lawyers at The Law Offices of Hilda Sibrian™ are here for you.
