The Texas Department of Transportation has good news- that year-over-year traffic fatalities on Texas dropped 11 percent in 2009 from the previous year.
The department attributed a large portion of that unprecedented drop to an increased focus on safety-related projects in the past six years.
“Safety is our top priority,” said TXDOT spokesman Larry Krantz. “One life lost on the roadways each year is too many, but a one-year decrease in fatalities of 11 percent is excellent news.”
Continuing the good news trend:  Statewide, there were 3,089 fatalities on Texas highways in 2009, down from 3,477 in 2008, and down further still from 3,921 in 2003 when the department first started designing and building safety-specific projects on a statewide basis.
The combined Tyler District numbers reflect the 11-percent statewide decrease, but show a wide disparity between the eight counties the district serves.
The East Texas counties also share in this welcoming news.  Fatalities in 2009 dropped 53 percent in Gregg County, dropping from 32 in 2008, to 15. Van Zandt County buying drugs online without prescription saw a 35 percent decrease, dropping from 20 to 13, followed by Henderson County at 29.6 percent, 27 to 19, and Cherokee County, down 11 percent, 18 to 16.
However, Rusk County stayed the same at 18 fatalities.
Unfortunately some counties did not fair as well. Fatalities spiked in Wood County in 2009, jumping 140 percent from 5 to 12, up 18 percent in Anderson County from 17 to 20 and up nearly 10 percent in Smith County, from 41-45.
According to Krantz, that just goes to show that even though the numbers are trending downward, we still have a lot of work buy acomplia no prescription to do, both as TXDOT and as individual motorists.
Krantz discussed one particular project that stood out in his mind: the concrete median barrier on Interstate 20, which runs from the Kaufman County Line to the Harrison County Line.
“Every time I drive on the Interstate, I look at the marks on that wall,” he said. “And I think, for each one of those marks, that barrier may have prevented a crossover wreck. And head-on wrecks on the Interstate are almost always fatal.”
TXDOT has another round of safety projects scheduled to begin construction next March, which includes $49 million for projects in the Tyler District including widening small sections of various narrow roadways and adding rumble strips on the centerline of some sections of highways.
The projects will break ground across the district over the next few years.
“We have some of the oldest and narrowest roads in the state right here in East Texas,” Krantz said. “We’ve taken some big steps toward doing our part from the engineering side to make highways safer, but as long as there are cars and trucks on the roads, there will be crashes, and some will inevitably be fatal. We’re just hoping for fewer and fewer each year.”