Traffic – Truck Accidents Continue in the Eagle Ford Shale Region

Truck Accidents on the Rise

Ford and Laurel Attorneys at Law,
San Antonio 6/18/14

Truck Accident Attorneys San Antonio

For the past five years the driving and road conditions in the Eagle Ford Shale region of south Texas has been deteriorating under the impact of the booming oil industry. Although the revenue from this boom has brought growth to the region, the cost of success has caused concern for local officials who hadn’t realized just how much their roads and traffic would be impacted.

With small roads bearing the weight of heavy traffic, deterioration has been inevitable. Pot-holes and crumbling road shoulders add to the increase in danger. In 2012, Casey Goetz, a major with the Department of Public Safety’s highway patrol, said that in Karnes, La Salle, and Dimmit counties, the number of crashes involving commercial trucks rose by 1,000 percent.

Locals report seeing passenger vehicles run off the roads by commercial trucks, and one witness said she watched a commercial truck pass a stopped school bus. Many remember quieter times when fatal crashes only happened once a year. Now it seems like they’re a weekly occurrence. In 2013, there were 3,430 crashes in the Eagle Ford Shale region that resulted in serious injuries or fatalities — a 26 percent jump from 2012.

The most frequently cited causes for McMullen County accidents were truck drivers ignoring signs in construction zones and defective headlights, according to the TxDOT data. To make matters worse, when Truck Accidents happen in these rural counties it takes first responders longer to arrive on […]

Car Accident Attorneys San Antonio-Eagle Ford

Car Accident Attorneys Blog: Ford and Laurel, San Antonio 2/16/14

Heading down 281 South this morning, and I read the over-head sign: 283 car fatalities in Texas for 2014.

It’s tragic and devastating, a sad reminder of how irresponsible some drivers can be, their reckless behaviors often the cause of such fatalities. I wondered how our general vicinity factored into these numbers then I found an interesting article in Sunday’s Express-News titled, “Boom Areas (Eagle Ford) Seeing Rise in Serious Crashes”.

Here is the take-away:
Fatalities in the Eagle Ford…
In 2011 : 177
In 2012 : 248
In 2013 : 236

But that’s only the crashes involving fatalities. There were thousands more, many involving serious injury. As for those numbers…
In 2011 : 2,673 accidents
In 2012 : 2,743 accidents, (ok, slight increase, hope it’s not the start of something…)
In 2013 : 3,430. (Drastic Jump – this isn’t the direction we’re supposed to be going in, people!)

Car accident attorneys Picture shows a recent Accident in Three Rivers Live Oak County that cost the lives of three oilfield workers. DPS suspects driver fatigue. Picture credit: KZTV

What’s going on?
The rural infrastructure in Dimmit, La Salle, McMullen, Karnes and Dewitt counties was not intended for the massive increase in mostly commercial truck traffic. The Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) research has found, and to no surprise, that the push of traffic happens between 9am and 5pm. In the Permian Basin, another Boom Area, they’re seeing the same thing. The most dangerous time for driving […]