The Dallas City Council passed a measure on Wednesday to lower the speed limit on a statistically dangerous segment of U.S. 75 Central Expressway.
The speed limit from Mockingbird Lane to Woodall Rodgers Freeway will soon be lowered from 70 to 65 miles per hour. The Texas Department of Transportation told NBC 5 DFW it will install new signs before implementing the change.
The council members’ action followed a Monday report by NBC 5 on excessive speeding along U.S. 75. A reporter tracked car speeds at three locations between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., finding at least a dozen drivers going more than 100 miles per hour, with the most reckless instance clocking in at 133 miles per hour.
Another NBC 5 investigation last year tracked 18 deaths and 78 serious injuries stemming from accidents on the Central Expressway in Dallas over five years.
However, data showed law enforcement wrote 70% fewer speeding tickets on the Central Expressway between 2019 and 2021. Speeding tickets increased in 2022 but were still down 30% compared to 2019.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia said last year that he wants to see more speed enforcement in the city, but the department faces a significant shortage of officers. It is short as many as 1,000, at least according to a prior City analysis.
“We need more visibility. Speeds are way too fast,” Garcia told NBC 5. “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.”
The Texas Department of Transportation increased the speed limit on the Central Expressway in Dallas nine years ago from 65 to 70 miles per hour. The city council’s decision Wednesday will return the speed limit to its lower level.
Experts told NBC 5 that 70 miles per hour is too high for an urban area.
“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. “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.”
The issue of speeding on the Central Expressway in Dallas received national media coverage last spring after Rashee Rice, a wide receiver on the Kansas City Chiefs, was involved in a crash on March 30 that injured four people. Rice was allegedly driving 119 miles an hour seconds before the collision.
A study this year found Dallas has the sixth most dangerous drivers in the nation, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.