Residents of one neighborhood in Northeast Dallas said speeding drivers have converted their community into a “raceway.”
Dallasites who live off of Forest Lane and Woodbridge Drive are demanding that city leaders do more to stop the cars they say are constantly racing and speeding down the road all hours of the day, especially after one man died in an accident allegedly caused by racing.
“It’s a known raceway,” Lynne Rains, who has been living in the neighborhood for over 10 years, told WFAA.
Rains said that, over the course of three months, there were at least four major crashes, one of which was fatal.Â
The victim was walking and talking on the phone with his mother when a speeding driver hit and killed him, according to Rains. No arrests have been made.
“His car had broken down. He was walking to an Uber, and he may have stepped off the curb, and a car hit him. The car was going an [excess of] 90 mph,” Rains said.
Other accidents were also mentioned. In one, a man was reportedly speeding down a nearby road in mid-October, crashed into a wall, and was thrown from the car.Â
While city officials put up a flashing sign saying “slow down,” residents said that is not enough to stop speeding drivers.
“We need help. Safety is first with all the bus stops and the speeding cars. It’s terrifying to think of what can happen,” said Rains.
Residents of the area have even been forced to use their own money to fix brick walls damaged from crashes, WFAA reported.
Dallas has the second-highest traffic fatality rate among the 15 most populated U.S. cities, reaching 14 deaths per 100,000 people. Fort Worth ranks fourth.
City council created a task force to help reduce these fatalities in 2019, but the problem has only worsened in the three years since — Dallas had the fifth-highest rate of traffic fatalities when the task force was formed.
Alongside the issue comes an increase in many other categories of crime, especially auto-related offenses like thefts of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
According to the downloadable data set made available by the City of Dallas Open Data website, 295 hazardous traffic violations were reported in December alone, a 17% increase over the same month the previous year.
It remains to be seen whether city leaders will get such car-related crimes under control to ensure the safety of Dallas’ pedestrians and motorists alike.
We need Red light cameras, and now Stop sign cameras, and speed limit cameras, you see CAMERAS DON’T DISCRIMINATE, what other way to generate revenue without typing up a human cop..these animals have a TOTAL DISREGARD FOR TRAFFIC/DRIVING RULES PERIOD.
No, that is not what is needed at all. Police are not ticketing speeders and enforcing the law to begin with. Having inanimate objects giving tickets that arrive 10 days later will do NOTHING. Besides which in almost every community where this has been done, eventually it is found out that the companies that run them or the police or both begin to place them and manage them in away that makes them profit centers and not designed to change the public’s habits.
The ONLY way to change those habits is actual BOOTS on the GROUND cops giving real time tickets. Then it stops the problem. Getting tickets 2 weeks later does not and never will.
The issue is that POLICE are not doing their jobs. In communities where speed bumps are added, we find lower income areas only, people’s suspension destroyed within a few years and generally people having to drive MUCH SLOWER than the legal limit in order to be safe. We find those same areas generally have no issues when police actually patrol for speeding…
There needs to be some workable solution to the problem…putting up speed bumps, or those small circles that are designed to slow down traffic & control som residential 4-way roads without using stops signs, putting up cameral in these problem areas that are designed to catch the speeders. I’m no expert, but something needs to happen.
Fully agree, drivers in DFW area drive way too fast these days and DPD and TX DPS are never around. Used to be cops would randomly check for speeders, but now rare to see anyone stopped. When folks wanted to defund police, LE folks decided to just sit on their ass, get paid and do nothing. Why risk their life anymore for folks who don’t want the police? I get it. The is law enforcement method of quite quitting.