Our roads should be safer since fewer people are driving during the pandemic. But wrongful death numbers from car and truck wrecks have skyrocketed here. North Texas just endured another tragic weekend with six fatality wrecks reported. Most were caused by hit-and-run drivers.
And we have not even gotten to the Thanksgiving-New Years holiday period when alcohol-fueled collisions skyrocket every year.
We reached a sad new milestone yesterday: one or more Texas car accident deaths have happened every day for the past 20 years. During that time, over 70,000 innocent lives have been taken due to fatal collisions. That would almost fill up the AT&T Stadium for a Cowboys game last year. We are #1 in the country in this dismal statistic, even though California has 10 million more people.
The head of the Texas Transportation Commission said that 90% of Texas car accident deaths were preventable. But she noted that we were “numb” to the carnage and took it for granted. That’s a shame.
Here’s a fact you rarely hear: Texas is #1 in the U.S. for deaths caused by intoxicated drivers. Any one loss of life is tragic. Our figure of 886 is abysmal. So yesterday’s announcement by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office that every weekend will now become a “No Refusal” weekend is certainly good news. Hopefully, the chances of being the victim of a Tarrant County DWI accident will be curtailed starting this Friday night.
In the past, only a few weekends each year were designated as No Refusal Weekends, including New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl, Labor Day, and several others when it was known there would be more DWIs than usual. But Dallas, San Antonio, and other cities and counties have cracked down on DWIs on every weekend for years.
We sincerely hope you are not reading this post because this has happened to you. No one ever thinks a fatal car accident will happen to someone they know and love. But they tragically cause over 3,600 deaths each year in Texas. Just in two days this week, for example, six innocent people died in DFW in two crashes:
(1) Tuesday night in south Dallas: a drunk driver speeding the wrong way killed three people; and
Three people tragically died in a Fort Worth DWI wreck when a drunk driver of a pickup truck speeding the wrong way crashed into their car on NE Loop 820. A father, mother and their 9-year-old daughter from Dallas died at the scene. The pickup truck driver was helicoptered to a hospital in Fort Worth with life-threatening injuries. He has been charged with three counts of intoxication manslaughter with bond set at $100,000 per death. A lot of good that will do now. When will the next Fort Worth DWI wreck happen and how can we stop it?
In a blow to the Texas legal community, Justice David L. Bridges was tragically killed in a horrific collision on Saturday night. Justice Bridges was driving on Interstate 30 when a 32-year-old woman, Megan Smith of Royse City, was driving the wrong way and hit his and another vehicle head-on.
Smith was driving while intoxicated and was arrested for intoxication manslaughter.
Justice Bridges, 65, was elected in 1996 to the 5th District Court of Appeals in Dallas. He was born in Fort Worth, according to his biography on the Texas Judicial Branch website. After graduating from Texas Tech law school, he served as an assistant District Attorney and as the Chief Disciplinary Counsel for the State Bar of Texas.
Drunk driving wrecks are the number one cause of fatalities on our Texas roads. They are usually high speed collisions often caused by immature men driving huge pickup trucks. Like almost every vehicle collision, they are 100% preventable.
As a personal injury lawyer who has specialized in motor vehicle collisions for over 40 years, Bill Berenson has represented far too many victims of drunk driving wrecks, including the horrific “affluenza teen” case where his client was tragically paralyzed for life and four people tragically died.
Today the Star Telegram sadly reported that Texas has ranked #1 in the country over the past 30 years for child deaths in hot cars and trucks. We have lost 135 of our youngest Texans during that time and the country has lost almost 1,000 small children due to the criminal negligence of their drivers.
Here’s another terrible fact: Texas somehow suffers twice as many of these tragedies as California, but they have 10 million more people than we do.
With people staying home and driving less, you would hope that an unexpected benefit of the terrible pandemic is that car accidents decreased. They have — but not as much as you would have expected.
That’s because drunk and reckless drivers never take a break. They even seem to be out in even greater numbers, possibly now that the roads are emptier and they can drive faster.
Vehicle crashes are 100% preventable. If drivers followed basic traffic laws, they wouldn’t happen and people wouldn’t be rushed to ERs.
A driver hit a car on Monday night in Burleson, then fled the scene. The life of Tre Allison, a popular 16-year-old, was taken away. He was a top student at Burleson High School, a devout Christian, and found time to be start on its football, basketball, and track teams.
Monday had been an exciting day for the Burleson football team. It was the first day that the quarantined players had been able to practice with their new football coach, the former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna.
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