When driving through Texas this past week I was greeted by those overhead digital signs that have an inspirational or perhaps cautionary message. Of the messages I saw, one in particular stuck out in my mind. Whilst I didn’t write down the exact wording the message in essence was 2,871 people had died on the roads in Texas in 2019 so far.
Given that the message was up the entire time I was there, I expect this was for January to October inclusive (about 300 days) which is 19 people killed every two days in Texas alone.
Okay, so Texas is a big state and has a big population, so what’s that equate to in terms of people killed per head of population? There are 28.7M living in Texas as of 2018 which isn’t that different from all of Australia (25M). So the current statistics in Australia from January to September 2019: 914 people killed (1,015 corrected over 10 months) for an average of 6.6 every two days, which means that in Texas there are 2.5-3 times as many people killed than in Australia.
In conjunction with this I’d like to point out a few other observations with comparisons to Australia:
- Speed Cameras: In the whole time I was driving in the USA this week I counted one speed camera - a roadside trailer mount unit. I never saw a speed camera on a traffic light, intersection, or mobile van. I’m sure they exist and maybe I missed them? In Australia scarcely a day passes when I’m driving when I don’t see at least one mobile unit, or trailer mounted unit and my commute takes me through one twice each day. In Australia the detractors would tell you they are merely revenue raising machines but the truth is they make a lot of people think twice about speeding.
- Speeding: In Australia I sit on the speed limit and on the freeway I’ll get overtaken maybe every 15-20th car at most, whereas in Houston and driving between Corpus Christie and Austin I was driving on the speed limit and was overtaken by almost every car! My best estimate was that most cars were driving 5-10mph over the speed limit. It was slightly scary.
- Dangerous Driving in Wet Weather: During the wet weather in Houston on Thursday I was tailgated, cut off multiple times and the other drivers seemed to not care that it was wet with many still speeding and overtaking as they had in the dry. The amount of risk taking was insane, and whilst I won’t pretend that Australian drivers are angels, there was far more respect, slower driving speeds and caution in the wet, especially heavy rain.
- Running Red Lights: On a typical commute in Brisbane I’ll see maybe one or two cars run a red light, however we have red light cameras fitted at many intersections so most of the time people don’t or won’t risk it. I lost count of how many cars blatantly ran red lights and honestly I began to pay additional attention to make sure everyone had stopped before I entered intersections, much to the annoyance of those behind me. Self-preservation y’all.
It’s likely that the high-density traffic in major cities is a focal point for accidents and it’s possible that due to large Texas cities having many freeways and congestion that this amplifies impatience and may go some way to explaining the tripling of the road toll compared to my home country.
In the end there’s probably a lot of complicated reasons why it’s so horrific but either way you slice it that’s a massive amount of bloodshed on the roads. There are other places in the world where people drive their cars just as much or even further on average, at or above those speed limits with significantly less fatalities. It can be better.
Anywhere you’re driving, drive safely. Please. Really, seriously please drive safely.