Out of Control Walking, cycling in Houston region can be risky

Out of Control Walking, cycling in Houston region can be risky

Fourth in an occasional series

Doug Baysinger remembers everything up to the crash.

One moment he and his wife were about five miles into a long weekend bike ride from their home in Sugar Land west into the Texas prairie. The next moment, he was sliding along the pavement.

"It felt like five minutes, but I'm sure it was just a few seconds," he said.

It was two years ago in July. Baysinger had been vaulted from his bike by a red Toyota Camry, driven by a drowsy woman who drifted into the group of about 10 riders. Bikes and riders flew through the air as she plowed through the rest of the bicyclists and finally stopped.

His pain was excruciating — doctors later discovered he had two fractured vertebrae — but then he saw Joyce, lying face down in the street, blood pooling by her head.

"I thought she was dead," he said. "I thought she'd gotten completely run over by the car."

Baysinger crawled over to his wife.

He saw her chest rising and falling. At least she was breathing.

The Baysingers were among the lucky ones. In the past 16 years, Houston-area drivers have mowed down nearly 2,000 pedestrians and cyclists. That's more than 100 deaths a year, with the number increasing in the past three years to more than 150 fatalities annually and an average of more than 350 serious injuries.

OUT OF CONTROL: Read our entire series here

That death toll makes the Houston region one of the deadliest major metro areas in the country for people walking, biking or using a wheelchair along area streets, a Houston Chronicle review of federal data shows. The nine-county region ranks fourth per-capita for bicyclists killed in roadway crashes and fifth for pedestrians — even though a small percentage of people here walk or bike as a way to get around.

The reasons for Houston's high injury count are as varied as the types of people being struck: Lack of adequate space for pedestrians and bicyclists; impassable sidewalks that stymie wheelchair users; long distances between safe crossings that compel people to dash across freeway lanes; a lack of lighting along many roads.

The region's roads are built to move vehicles as quickly as possible, safety advocates say, meaning those forced to walk or bike put their lives at risk. Many who otherwise would choose a car-free trip are too afraid to do so.

"There are a lot of people who are willing to have a few people die to save two minutes on their commute," said Christof Spieler, a Houston engineer and urban planner specializing in street design, who spent eight years on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Advocates also lament the lack of harsh consequences in many cases where someone died. In cases where drivers are found guilty, it is typically of lesser charges, particularly when they were charged with leaving the scene of the crash, court records show.

Since 2010, about one-quarter of fatal crashes involving cyclists or pedestrians have led to any criminal charges for the driver, records show, though that is not significantly less than the percentage charged in crashes involving two or more automobiles.

Combined, those factors have helped create an environment where cars are king, and they've made pedestrians, cyclists and the disabled into second-class citizens who are disproportionately likely to be injured as they commute.

RELATED: Shared frustration fuels driver-cyclist divide

The carnage cuts across age and class, gender and ethnicity, though men and minorities seem to be overrepresented in the deaths. It impacts able-bodied pedestrians as well as those in wheelchairs or who are unable to walk safely on their own. People bleed or die on city sidewalks, along rural county roads and on suburban streets. Those who survive often spend months or years rehabilitating injuries that leave lifelong pain and rob them of passions such as cycling. The memories leave them anxious every time they traverse the region's streets.

Survivors tend to their injuries, or bury their loved ones, feeling frustrated and ignored.

"Nobody is really paying attention," said Wigdan Ahmed Mohammed.

Her 4-year-old son was crossing a street near their west Houston home when a driver struck and killed him two years ago.

Every day, she walks by the intersection where he died.

'A public health crisis'

Though many cities are struggling to keep vulnerable users safe on their streets, the problem is particularly pronounced in Texas, where rapid city growth and urbanization are putting more pedestrians in the path of hurried drivers.

Texas and surrounding states have "the highest number of persons dying in pedestrian crashes since 1990," said Maggi Gunnels, acting regional administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based in Fort Worth. "This really is a crisis. A public health crisis."

DANGEROUS STREETS: Houston's roads, drivers are country's most deadly

From 2001 through 2016, drivers struck and killed 1,756 pedestrians, along with 235 cyclists — roughly 1 in 5 of the deaths along roadways in greater Houston. About half of Houston's pedestrian fatalities occur along the interstate system — caused by the proclivity of people in the region to dart across the highways on foot or get hit while stranded on the side of the road.

Dallas, where 60 percent of the pedestrian fatalities are along interstates, is the only major metro area with a higher per-capita number of crashes on highways involving one or more pedestrians.

Texas' pedestrian and cyclist death count continues to grow, even as officials have sounded the alarm for years, said Robert Wunderlich, director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute Center for Traffic Safety.

Fatalities in the Houston region peaked in 2016 at 198, up from 110 in 2010.

Fatalities dropped slightly in 2017, from 198 to 167, though cyclist deaths hit a record high of 21, up one from the previous year. But there's little evidence that public officials are making it a priority to improve the safety of those who walk, bike or move around in wheelchairs.

2017 by the numbers

1,409: Houston-area pedestrians injured in roadways crashes, 275 seriously

146: Pedestrians killed in roadways crashes

639: Bicyclists injured in roadways crashes, 82 seriously

21: Bicyclists killed in roadways crashes

Source: Texas Department of Transportation

Technology cannot save bicyclists and pedestrians, experts say. A car built to protect its passengers does little to protect people outside it.

Saving pedestrians requires different solutions. Texas focuses on education, with the Texas Department of Transportation and other agencies operating campaigns telling drivers to share the road and instructing cyclists to obey laws and wear a helmet. Cycling groups have called the campaigns ineffective, noting it is drivers who need to be brought to heel for not giving vulnerable users space.

Texas' highway safety plan, developed in 2017, makes education of drivers and pedestrians the top priority, in addition to recommending greater use of reflective street signs and striping and slowing cars to decrease the severity of crashes.

THE WAY FORWARD: Better lighting, signals, signs and ramps

What TxDOT and others have put on paper, however, is not what people see on the ground in Houston and other major metro areas across Texas.

"What we have got is a great plan, but it isn't going to save someone's life unless you all get out and do something with it," Wunderlich told a gathering of police, city planners and public works officials and safety experts in July. "The cavalry ain't coming."

No room for error

The Houston region was, is and always will be designed for the automobile, even in the region's densest areas. Cars and trucks dominate the rules of the road:

Virtually any business or building in Houston that attracts customers — even bars — must factor the city's minimum parking requirements into its plans and account for cars.

Businesses concentrate along freeway corridors and frontage roads to make it easier for customers to arrive by car, but many have decrepit sidewalks, or none at all.

Where officials have painted on-street bike lanes or added signs warning drivers to look for cyclists and to share the road, curbs and the edges of roadways where cyclists are expected to ride are often pocked, uneven and strewn with debris.

Neighborhoods divided by major freeways lack dedicated mid-block crossings, such as pedestrian bridges, to help people move from one side of the road to the other.

RELATED: Houston is 'ground zero' for drunken and drugged driving

Downtown streets favor moving cars out of parking lots and onto the roads at peak commuting times, often at the expense and delay of pedestrians along the wide sidewalks in the central business district.

On Texas Avenue, cyclists avoid cars by hopping onto crowded sidewalks, even though local laws require them to travel on the streets. Outside the city core, where most pedestrian and cyclist crashes occur, riders and walkers face uneven terrain: sidewalks buckled by trees or buried under deposits of mud. In many cases, they just abruptly end.

Along Houston-area freeways, pedestrians are expected to make a tough choice: Walk blocks out of their way or risk crossing a road where drivers travel over 60 mph.

From 2016 through 2017, 70 pedestrians were struck and killed on Houston-area freeways, with 28 fatalities along Interstate 45. Five of those were between Little York and Tidwell, where the freeway is at-grade with local streets and where crossings are often more than one mile apart.

Three of the five pedestrians killed tested positive for drugs or had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.

Local elected officials and road planners concede the region needs more significant investment to help pedestrians and cyclists make better decisions. Some solutions, such as blocking off freeways with fencing or high walls, can be added when freeways are rebuilt, along with safe crossings such as pedestrian bridges over freeways or improved frontage road crosswalks.

"If you can build some sort of infrastructure to prevent a problem in the first place, you have gone a long way to solving the problem," said Michael Manser, a senior researcher in the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's human factors program.

A deadly path No part of the Houston metro area is immune from pedestrian and cyclists crashes, an analysis of eight years of crash data shows. Fatalities and serious injuries are spread across the entire nine-county region. Source: Texas Crash Records Information System | Created by Rachael Gleason

Failure to yield

Mohammed Ali Abdalla died a block from home. He was 4. It was the first day of school.

Wigdan Ahmed Mohammed was walking her two older children to KIPP Connect Primary, Mohammed in tow. He'd wanted to stay home.

"I can't leave you by yourself," his mother recalled telling him. They walked out of their townhome, took a left on De Moss, and continued to the end of the block.

The west Houston neighborhood was teeming with families on their way to school, a local health clinic or the community mosque.

Wigdan walked with Osman, 8, Rawan, 6, and Mohammed. A MetroLift bus stopped. They walked out in front of it into the crosswalk, marked every few feet with thick white stripes.

Then a black GMC Acadia hit Mohammed.

"She just moved without looking at what was going on," Wigdan recalled.

The driver — who was not ticketed or charged with any crime — dragged Mohammed for about 20 feet before the driver noticed Wigdan running after her, waving and screaming.

Mohammed died on impact. A report filed after the crash said the little boy "failed to yield the right of way" to the driver who hit him.

To lose his daily smile was devastating, said Aboobiada Ali Abdalla, his father.

Community activists want to turn a patch of ground near the crash site into a memorial.

Abdalla, 48, went there on a recent Sunday, retracing his son's final steps in the fading evening light.

"Every time," he said, "I remember him."

A greater cost

Disabled residents are especially challenged moving around the area.

"When we think about what pedestrians look like, and how they might be interacting with our streets... we need to be envisioning a 65-year-old (wheelchair) user," said Maria Town, director of Houston's Office for People With Disabilities.

Houston requires sidewalk improvements as part of redevelopment of properties or rebuilding of streets, but leaves most of the control in the hands of landowners. As a result, many sidewalks in the oldest parts of the city are dilapidated, with portions lifted by tree roots that make them impassable for wheelchair users and people unsteady on their feet.

Many of the areas with residents most in need of decent walking paths to access transit have among the worst sidewalks, according to the local advocacy group LINK Houston and the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University.

Residents can report problem areas to the city for an Accessibility Review Request, Town said, but that alone isn't enough to solve the problem.

"Accessibility needs to be a prime driver for safety and vice versa," she said. "If streets are not safe, they're not accessible. If people don't feel safe walking around, they're not going to."

DANGEROUS DESIGN: In Houston's traffic carnage, design makes a difference

All too frequently, infrastructure projects prioritize automobiles over pedestrian safety, advocates say.

"Not enough money is allocated to pedestrian and bicycle projects," said Clark Martinson, executive director of the nonprofit BikeHouston. "We have got to be thinking of other sources of funding."

The Houston-Galveston Area Council, the regional planning agency that doles out federal transportation money, includes $388.5 million for bicycle and pedestrian improvements over the next two decades — out of a total transportation plan of $88.3 billion. Some roadway projects contribute to pedestrian improvements, though it is usually 1 or 2 percent of total projects.

Advocates for more sidewalks and bike lanes admit they need to lobby better. Road projects are well-funded, in large part, because lawmakers hear from drivers and developers who demand more roads.

"We have got to sell this in our communities," said Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, an avid cyclist.

Ellis offered $10 million in county funds to help Houston officials address key connections to improve safety for riders and walkers. Ellis' goal, he said, was addressing that many people in Houston do not own a car and still need a safe way to school or work. Much of the money would add trails and bike lanes in places caused by Houston's growth, he said, but where developers never installed them.

‘I AM NOT DONE’

Doug Baysinger still chokes up reliving the bicycle crash. He's still angry.

The driver wasn't ticketed. It isn't illegal to fall asleep while driving.

"For her to not even get a ticket, and to cause so much pain and suffering.... It's just beyond me," Doug Baysinger said.

TALES FROM THE STREET: Flying glass, dives from a wheelchair

Joyce, who has since recovered, abandoned cycling. She doesn't even like to get on stationary bikes at the gym — it just brings back memories of the crash.

"I keep hearing a bunch of friends getting hit by a car," she said. "And I'm just scared. Scared for them, scared for Doug."

Doug remains in chronic pain. He stopped riding for months but eventually missed it so much he recently started again. He got a tattoo on his left forearm. "I AM NOT DONE," it declares.

"When I stop riding it will be because I want to stop riding," he said. "Not because I'm afraid."

St. John Barned-Smith joined the Houston Chronicle in 2014 and covers public safety and major disasters. He has worked on two teams named Pulitzer finalists in recent years – for covering Hurricane Harvey and for helping show how Texas unlawfully denied education services to children with special needs. He previously reported in Philadelphia and Maryland and spent two years in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.

Dug Begley is the transportation writer for the Houston Chronicle. Contact him at dug.begley@chron.com. Follow him on Twitter @DugBegley.

Photos by Houston Chronicle staff

Graphics by Rachael Gleason

Design by Jordan Rubio

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