Statistics show Amarillo has the highest rate of fatal car wrecks involving alcohol compared to other Texas cities its size

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - From recent statistics, it has been proven that Amarillo is the city with the highest rate of fatal accidents involving alcohol compared to other cities its size in the state of Texas.

Studies are showing that the general cause of accidents this past year has been to turning movements and failure to control speed, especially when making a left-hand turn. 79 percent of accidents this year have happened when someone is making a left-hand turn.

Accidents and crashes are not only effecting other drivers but pedestrians and cyclist as well.

“A lady turned left without signaling and looking over her right shoulder ran into their bike trailer. Thankfully my husband was able to peddle fast enough that she just kind of clipped the back end of it. But the scuff mark on the trailer is right next to his head,” said Alena Martin, mother of two boys who was nearly hit by a car.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Advisory Committee was established two years ago to help with issues such as this.

"We’re just very used to driving everywhere, and I think there’s a powerful desire for more safe options to walk and bike in town," said Timothy Ingalls, chairman of Pedestrian Bike Committee of Amarillo.

The top five streets in Amarillo with the highest amount of wrecks are Coulter, Western, Georgia, Bell and Soncy.

With the statistics given today, the city is already working on plans to reduce these numbers.

“Come up with what is our best plan of attack to solve those problems. Is that a design issue that an engineer would make some physical changes to the shape of intersection or is that an educational thing where we try and push out some public information to drivers and pedestrians or maybe some advanced signing or something at those locations to encourage people to be looking and paying attention,” said Kyle Schniederjan, director of Capital Projects and Development Engineering.

The Public Works Department is currently working on the opening of their traffic control center.

“We’re implementing a new traffic control center that will allow us to observe patterns in the traffic control and the signals across town. And so as we were able to invest a little bit of capital in those control systems, we’ll be able to identify the different trend better. By observing the trends in our traffic control, we can observe a design issue with an intersection that has high incidents and come up with a solution,” said Schniederjan.

Editor’s Note: This story has been edited to reflect that Amarillo has the highest alcohol related fatality rates compared to other cities its size in Texas.