Posted on 01/17/2017 8:05:53 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The fatal lunchtime accident that shut down Interstate 10 for hours on Tuesday caught Vidor resident Theresa Manley's attention right away.
"My 17-year-old totaled her car in that spot last summer," said Manley, 45, as she filled up her car at the Flying J in Orange on Wednesday. "That was a scary phone call."
Manley said her daughter, who was driving with Manley's 12-year-old son, rear-ended a pick-up truck after it rear-ended the car in front of it.
Her daughter's small Pontiac went under the large truck and was destroyed, she said, but her children were unharmed.
The accident happened near the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge where Tuesday's three vehicle accident killed two Orange residents and injured two people after an eighteen-wheeler rear-ended a flatbed truck and jumped the concrete median.
Such accidents have become common for the stretch of I-10 from Winnie to Orange, which saw an average of six crashes a day in 2016, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
I-10, with its gantlet of unending construction projects, traffic jams, hurtling eighteen-wheelers, distracted and impatient drivers, road debris and other perils, has many motorists frightened and frustrated.
Manley said she avoids it when possible. It has "most definitely" gotten more dangerous.
"I worry about those eighteen-wheelers that come up on you," she said.
Danger: Construction zones
More than 40,000 vehicles travel between Winnie and Orange each day. They don't all make it safely.
The number of crashes on I-10 in Southeast Texas has increased every year since 2013. In 2016, there were 2,211, up almost 57 percent from 2013. The number of fatalities on the same section of interstate almost doubled in the same time, from 16 to 30.
Ronald Burton, 81, said he often uses alternative routes or the frontage road to get to Beaumont or Orange from his home in Mauriceville and avoid unsafe drivers and construction.
"I hate it. You've got all this construction they've been working on for years. I don't know if I'm going to live long enough for them to finish," he said.
Claudia Jaume said her I-10 commute from her home in Orange to her office in Beaumont takes her on I-10 every day.
"It's ridiculous. I'd say there are two or three crashes a week," said Jaume, 39.
Jaume, a Houston native, said she regularly sits in traffic on I-10, especially during her morning commute, and would consider an alternative route that didn't take even longer.
Sarah Dupre, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation's Beaumont District, said I-10 construction projects are necessary for the road to accommodate larger numbers of people moving to the area.
TxDOT has several major projects underway on the Southeast Texas stretch of 1-10: reconstructing and widening the highway in Orange, widening the road in Winnie and expanding the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge in Beaumont.
Dupre said TxDOT soon will start a four-year project to widen I-10 from Winnie to Beaumont. The $68 million project will be done in four phases and is expected to be completed by 2020.
"With any kind of construction zone, we are asking if people are cautious, keep their eyes on the road," said Dupre. "Lanes might be shifted, speed limits might be slower than usual."
Danger: Distracted drivers
Mauriceville resident Andrew Vandagriff has lived in the area for 30 years and said interstate construction has been "going on since I can remember."
It's the people he worries about.
"It used to be drinking and driving. Now it's texting and driving," said Vandagriff, 48.
When it comes to factors in crashes, construction often is not the culprit, said DPS Trooper Sgt. Stephanie Davis.
Davis said texting, eating and other activities contribute to many accidents, not just on the interstate.
In 2015, distracted driving was a factor in 725 crashes in Jefferson County and 213 crashes in Orange County, according to TxDOT.
By far the top factor in crashes in 2015 was speeding, which figured into more than 136,000 crashes statewide, 213 in Jefferson County and 132 in Orange County.
But higher speeds, merging traffic and inadequate spacing between vehicles make the interstate less forgiving of momentary lapses in focus.
A 2011 study by the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute found the average reaction time for a driver with no distractions is one to two seconds, but when the driver is texting that time doubled to at least 3 to 4 seconds.
TxDOT recommends drivers follow a two-second rule when following vehicles, meaning drivers should be able to count to two seconds when passing a fixed object after the car in front of them.
Last August, TxDOT lowered the speed limit from 75 mph to 65 mph from the Chambers County line to Beaumont. The speed limit from Beaumont to the Louisiana border is 75 mph.
Davis resists characterizing the road as more dangerous in recent years, but underscored the necessity of wearing seat belts and paying attention to the road.
"I think as far as the interstate is concerned, we'll always have safety concerns," she said.
Manley said she worries about the spot before the bridge where her daughter crashed last summer and where Tuesday's accident occurred.
Drivers waiting until the last second to merge from the far right lane where westbound traffic goes from three lanes to two raise the stakes for all drivers.
"There's always idiots who are going to try to beat everyone else," she said.
It’s a crappy stretch of road, that serves as a warning. “Get ready, you are about to cross the Sabine River and enter the Third World.”
Sumbody oughtta do sumthin’ ‘bout that.
Last time I drove to Houston, in May 2014, I spent an hour sitting in my car on I-10 in Beaumont not moving.
I heard later 3 people died in the wreck that caused the traffic jam.
“which saw an average of six crashes a day in 2016 “
That’s an astonishing amount.
.
Dem Cajuns just don’t know how to drive.
I’m from Lake Charles and use to drive to Houston often. Not counting construction, i-10 along that route is fairly nice.
We used to go to Nawlin’s all the time and that I-10 stretch was so loooooong and borrrrrring. People need to get their collective heads outta their collective arses and pay attention!!
Paw Paws still a good place to eat ?
I drive it frequently and it can be a pretty tough stretch of road to drive. Needless to say, I don’t care for it much, but it’s the major throughway between Houston and the Louisiana line.
Lots of construction, 75mph speed limit, lots of traffic, including heavy truck traffic.
All it takes is just one inattentive driver and boom; there’s a wreck.
IF I’m heading eastbound and I can at least make it to the east side of Beaumont (Vidor), I’ll take 12 to 190 and on into Kinder, LA. It’s a lot slower going with traffic lights, small town cops, 2-lane roads, etc., but it beats getting injured/killed in one of I-10’s infamous wrecks.
A couple of months later and I wasn't surprised: the driving in southeast Texas looks a lot like the driving in Russian dashcam videos.
Every day I see morons driving 25+ miles an hour faster than the average rate fly all the way from the left lane across several lanes of traffic to make an exit, or someone else suddenly decide they want to stay on I10 and veer left at the last minute to escape an exit ramp.
In town, there's always the great "left turn from the right lane" or "right turn from the left lane."
All without signals, of course.
Funny and true.
>>the driving in southeast Texas looks a lot like the driving in Russian dashcam videos.
Ouch. Nasty business.
I think it’s closed, it was OK but steamboat bills and Leonard’s are better.
On the major roads in Dallas, you'll probably average 2-3 crashes a day.
As bad as it is, I think the stretch of I-35 from Dallas to Austin is worse. Brrr…
Thanks for the info .....
One of the questions that I’ve always wondered about is why it’s necessary to have, say, 12 major projects going on in Texas with light funding, so that they take an average of 15 years to complete (i.e., 180 project-years of traffic disruption).
Why not fund the projects better, so that you get them done faster - say in 5 years (tops)...so you triple the funding for each project, but cut the number of simultaneous projects down to 4. Then the disruption over 15 years is just 60 project-years, one third of the disruption, but just as much work completed. If you get the average down to 3 years, then just 36 project-years.
I realize there’s a limit to how fast a project can move, but I suspect most major projects, if optimized for speed can easily done in 5 years, if not 3 years. Now it will make the construction zones at any one time a lot longer (like 25 miles at a time, rather than 5 miles), but it doesn’t help much to have most of the highway free of construction, but still have a choke point where the work is going on. Just go there with a bunch of equipment, tear up everything at once, rebuild everything at once, AND BE DONE - and at no extra cost.
I suspect that the time to complete projects in Texas, especially near the Gulf Coast, has to do with the type of soil, especially if there are overpasses involved. Something to do with settling time I think. I’m not a civil/structural engineer.
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