Local officer tells how Abilene is recovering from the 'deadliest roads' title this year

ABILENE, Texas — According to TxDOT, over 80,000 people have died on Texas roads, and we all know that last year was claimed to be the deadliest year for Abilene. So what can we do differently than last year to prevent fatalities?

“We did see a high number of fatalities which makes people more cautious about their driving, trying to be a little safer themselves. Not only that, we had our enforcement action to help,” said Officer Michael Garcia, the traffic investigator of Abilene Police Department.

Abilene has some dangerous roads. In fact, 2022 had the highest number of crash fatalities in Abilene history. Officer Garcia speaks about those numbers and the streets in Abilene that have high crashes every year.

“Last year was an unusual year that we’ve seen fatalities. We had more than we had seen in previous years,” said the officer. Buffalo Gap, Clyde and Campbell; those are all high traffic areas due to the many businesses that are around and the travel points for those who live out of Abilene coming into town,” said Officer Garcia.

Even though last year was pretty deadly for the Big Country roads, we are doing better this year than last year. In March of 2022, Abilene already had 7 fatalities in 5 crashes. Although we are off to a good start, Officer Garcia offers us some safety tips.

“As a pedestrian, always use a sidewalk if there is one available. It prevents you from having to be on the road,” said the Traffic Investigator. “More importantly if you do have to travel on the roadway, you need to travel on a roadway where you can see traffic coming towards you,” said Garcia.

According to TXDOT, there have been 88 fatalities within the Abilene MPO area between 2015 and 2020. However, so far this year, there have not been any fatalities so far.

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