Dangerous Domino Effect from a West Texas Street Racing Rollover Wreck

The hazards created by street racing and drunk driving pose two huge problems for Texas drivers. These problems have grown so big that now the wrecks they cause sometimes overlap to cause cascading accident situations. A very bad sign.

One fatal West Texas rollover wreck that resulted from street racing led to two additional wrecks. These wrecks occurred while the accident scene underwent investigation. A drunk driver ignored the road closures and plowed head-on into a parked police car. That same driver also hit a vehicle trying to merge onto the frontage road away from the rollover accident scene.

Let's look at just some of the costs from this cascading West Texas accident scene.

• One fatality, the driver of a dark green truck that was racing a car.
• One critically injured young man, the passenger in the dark green truck.
• The costs of the first responders who worked the accident.
• The costs of additional investigation and report requirements on the accident.
• The emotional cost to the mother who recognized the wrecked dark green truck. She had been looking for her son, and recognized the truck as the one in which he had ridden off with the other two young men. (He was not found at the rollover accident scene. Police think he parted company with the other two men before the accident.)
• The repair or replacement cost for the police car wrecked by the drunk driver.
• A wrecked dark green truck and damaged vehicles from subsequent related accidents.
• The costs in lost time to everyone delayed by the closure of a section of I-10 because of the accidents.
• The costs for rescue workers who responded to the additional wrecks following the rollover. They treated at the scene the drunk driver and the other driver injured by the wreck.

Texas A&M's Transportation Institute just released a study on traffic congestion and the costs in lost time and productivity from traffic tie-ups throughout the nation. Four Texas cities ranked in the top 10 for the worst traffic problems. Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi and McAllen. There are some top rankings that Texas could do without. They all seem to relate to our driving conditions. We also hold the top spots for drunk driving fatalities and for illegal street racing.

As Texans, we love it when our sports teams, like the Dallas Mavericks, bring us national attention. But we could do without the national attention on our extremely costly traffic problems. So many of these costs and problems are completely avoidable. Just taking away the hazards posed by street racing and drunk driving would save enormous amounts of money. Imagine the positive things that Texas could do with those funds.