Two separate crashes involving North Texas police officers responding to calls have occurred over the space of a week.
Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve, an allegedly drunk driver, Roger Saenz-Blandon, plowed into a K-9 police unit while reportedly making a left turn and failing to yield to traffic at the intersection of Jacksboro Highway and Skyline Drive in Sansom Park.
No one involved in the accident was injured.
“If the timing was a little bit further, maybe they collided at a different angle, we are very thankful for the way and the outcome we had,” said Sansom Park police’s public information officer Tyler Downes, according to Fox 4 KDFW.
The officer involved in the collision had been flashing the patrol car’s emergency lights and running the siren while en route to assist another police agency. The incident was captured by a nearby patrol car’s dash camera.
A few days later, another late-night crash occurred in Haltom City.
Two Haltom City police officers in a patrol car were headed to a call when they collided with a driver at the intersection of Haltom Road and the Loop 820 service road at around midnight on January 3. All three individuals were hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries.
The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but alcohol was reportedly not involved.
According to data from the Texas Department of Transportation, a reportable crash occurred every 57 seconds across the state in 2022. Meanwhile, a traffic accident would yield one injury roughly every two minutes and one fatality almost every two hours. This means not one day passed without a roadway death.
This past year, TxDOT launched an awareness-building campaign known as #EndTheStreakTX to promote safer driving practices while lawmakers passed several bills aiming to boost traffic safety, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.