Reflecting On Texas Traffic
The Needless Fatalities on the Open Roads
Texas is under a deep freeze until Saturday, at least where I live in the North Dallas area. This freeze is a good time to reflect on some Texas-related items and give the national security and veteran drums a break.
I am a recent transplant to Texas moved here in October of 2021. I previously lived in Washington D.C. while I worked for the Trump Administration in the Commerce Department first, then the Department of the Treasury later. I moved here for work, and Texas is an unusual and unique place in this country.
https://www.texas.gov/moving-to-texas/
Texas is different from other places where I lived. You go to two separate entities, the Department of Public Safety and the County Tax Assessor, to obtain a driver’s license and register your car. In my experience, this happens at the local DMV office elsewhere. There’s also a massive and chronic backlog to obtain a driver’s license in the major metropolitan areas—multiple months-long waits. Many people take day trips to drive out far enough to a DPS office where it’s less busy.
While inconvenient and a completely manageable issue by the State of Texas, this isn’t that big of a problem. The more significant problem I’ve seen living in Dallas is the reckless drivers and avoidable catastrophic accidents.
https://www.finder.com/texas-car-accident-statistics
Before breaking into the numbers, anecdotally, some of the laziest drivers live in this part of the country. People drive well below the speed limit on highways, routinely merging or changing lanes without turn signals, crossing over dividers. So far, I’ve seen three accidents where people merge into one another on a highway. Horn use is absent as well, which could save lives.
I have no way to prove this, I feel like Texas lanes are smaller, and many people can’t stay in their lanes here. I also saw this in the DMV – I blamed it on wealthy suburbanites with SUVs they couldn’t control. Herewith the urbanite with an oversized truck phenomenon, it is noticeable too in DFW, but it’s democratized beyond just the truck chassis.
In the first three-quarters of 2021, Texas road fatalities increase a whopping 22%, according to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Fatalities are the most objective way to measure traffic accident outcomes since many accidents are not recorded. However, we can make some speculative guesses because this is a Substack, and there are no rules. We can say at the very least that the total number of accidents is increasing as well. I don’t know how to look up insurance claims, but I would put money that would pan out. Is it 22% more? I think in a Bayesian assumption, that would be fair. I believe that number is higher because the erratic driver is typically a young man with a nearly equal opportunity to crash into something instead of into someone.
There is also a tremendous number of pedestrians struck here. This pans out in my experience where there’s a cultural disregard of pedestrians, even in my parking garage. The leading causes are alcohol, followed by speeding. I couldn’t find data on texting.
This data also parlays into one of the major maladies of American society: substance abuse. Dallas is a drinking-centered culture in both professional and after-work activities. I would guess this rate is also much higher in illegal alien populations.
Texas needs more police officers to enforce basic traffic laws, especially Dallas-Forth Worth. More traffic enforcement will save lives. Surprisingly, this isn’t a major campaign topic in the political elections, given how anti-defund the police Texans tended to be outside of Austin. I have no strong opinions on the speed limits. There could be improvements in highway design as well.
The point is that the roads are needlessly dangerous, especially the iced-up ones currently.
So far, the power has held up well here despite the freeze. Some of my first public appearances after the Trump Administration were to discuss the energy crisis here in Texas last year. I will put together something in the future on this Substack. However, the short story is that yes, renewables started the failure. Yes, they did “rebound” faster than some traditional electricity producers. No, that’s not an indictment of conventional energy, renewables aren’t as effective in inclement weather, and public financing and infrastructure mismanagement is a significant problem even in Texas.
Texas Drivers are the worst. It's the illegal aliens. If they start pulling people over, they'd have to deal with the problem.