I-45 in Dallas came to a standstill on Saturday afternoon following a tragic accident.
The Dallas Fire-Rescue (DFR) reported a collision involving three vehicles on the interstate near Simpson Stuart Road, reported Fox 4 KDFW.
An initial police investigation showed that a car was heading north on the interstate when it collided with another car. As a result, the first car veered across the median into southbound traffic, striking two vehicles in the southbound lanes before crashing into the guardrail and flipping over.
Three individuals inside the first vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene, while both drivers of the southbound vehicles were transported to the hospital, where one of them died, per WFAA.
Police said the condition of the other driver in the southbound lanes is unknown.
According to Dallas Police, officers responded to the crash in the 9500 block of northbound I-45 around 1 p.m., September 14.
The investigation is ongoing.
Last year, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia expressed his desire for increased speed enforcement in the City. However, the department is currently experiencing a substantial shortage of officers, potentially as many as 1,000 according to a previous analysis conducted by the City.
“We need more visibility. Speeds are way too fast,” Garcia told NBC 5 in the previous interview. “There’s probably not a day that I that I drive that I don’t see … someone operating their motor vehicle in some egregious fashion.”
“At some point, you have to make a choice of whether it’s more important to save lives or to facilitate fast car traffic,” David Zipper, a visiting fellow at Harvard University, said, reported The Dallas Express. “What really strikes me is that these are just, these highways are so wide that they’re acting as like a faucet, just shooting so many cars into the urban core.”
Despite the City’s ambitious initiatives to enhance traffic safety, Dallas continues to be one of the most perilous areas in the country for both drivers and pedestrians, as previously reported by DX. According to a 2023 study by Forbes Advisor, Texas was ranked the fifth most dangerous state for drivers. A study by U.S. News & World Report last year ranked Dallas the ninth most dangerous City in the United States for drivers.
