You are driving into Houston on I-10 on the Harris County Toll Road Authority’s managed lanes. As you pass through Spring Valley Village, you collide with another vehicle. Your car spins out of the managed lanes into the main lanes, where you strike another car. Then your car comes to rest a few dozen feet further down the freeway, just inside the city limits of Houston.

You are okay. The other drivers are okay. You call 911 to report the crash.

Then comes another surprise. Units from up to three different law enforcement

agencies show up at the scene of the accident.

You see, Harris County Constable Precinct 5 patrols the I-10 managed lanes where your crash began. The Spring Valley Police Department is responsible for the section of the main lanes where you struck the other driver. And the Houston Police

Department patrols the sections of the highways within the city, where your car came to rest.

Within Harris County, highways are patrolled by 25 different police agencies. The crash scenario painted here highlights that complicated coverage in a somewhat farcical way, but crashes on our highways too often cause injuries and deaths, as the

Houston Chronicle’s “Out of Control” series is powerfully showing.

Simplifying the jumble of entities responsible for law enforcement on highways could help improve overall mobility, free up resources for more comprehensive speeding enforcement, and, most importantly, improve safety for all road users.

When reading the first part of the “Out of Control” series, I was struck not only by the fact that speeding ticket rates have consistently dropped over the past several years, but also by responses from local law enforcement leaders about the challenge of applying more resources to this issue.

The recent Kinder Institute report “Collaborations and Overlapping Services in Harris County Law Enforcement” presents several options for strengthening the existing law enforcement system and improving services for residents.

Consolidating highway patrol duties to improve efficiency and reduce overlaps is one of several options the report presents. Beyond minor efficiencies, though, some form of patrol realignment could help address our regional road safety crisis.

The report presents two options for reforming the current enforcement arrangement, but there are a number of other ways to move forward.

The first option would be for HPD to take of patrol duties for all HOV lanes, which are currently patrolled by METRO Police. This option would probably be feasible only as part of a larger merger of METRO police into HPD. But it would simplify response within the city and give HPD more officers for highway enforcement.

A second option would be simplifying the patrol of area tollways, which are currently patrolled by six of the eight Harris County constables through contracts with the Harris County Toll Road Authority. These patrol duties could be shifted to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which would give one office oversight of most highways in unincorporated Harris County and provide consistent response on all tollways.

Many other options exist. Smaller municipal departments could contract with HPD or the sheriff to patrol their sections of highways. This would allow officers from smaller departments to focus on patrols elsewhere, ideally helping to improve safety on local streets. If smaller towns are concerned about losing money generated by traffic tickets, contracts could be devised to split revenue in some agreeable way.

Harris County Commissioners Court and city governments could also decide to devote greater resources to traffic enforcement without changing the existing structures of responsibility. County commissioners, for example, could increase the budgets of both the sheriff’s and constables’ offices and require those funds to be spent on additional traffic enforcement.

Meanwhile, agencies relieved of highway patrol responsibilities could redistribute officers to other duties. Perhaps they could improve enforcement on local streets, where too many people walking and biking are injured and killed every year.

Realigning duties between agencies would also have the benefit of standardizing enforcement, creating a more consistent approach than we now have with an astonishing 25 different agencies patrolling our streets and highways.

Shifting major roles and responsibilities would not be easy — politically or financially — but it’s clear that we are facing a grave crisis on our roadways. Realigning these roles would necessarily be a process shared between the agencies involved, elected leaders, and residents.

Traffic enforcement is a powerful tool in the effort to improve safety, from neighborhood streets to the Katy Freeway. But it’s just one approach to this problem. We need to bring to all options to the table, then support the best ideas with funding and political backing.

Shelton is director of strategic partnerships at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.