Austin Intersection Among Nation's Least Safe For Holiday Travel

AUSTIN, TX — Austin is among the cities deemed as those least-safe to drive during the holiday season, researcher recently found.

Go Safe Labs this week released rankings of hot spots for traffic accidents across the country, putting Interstate 35 at William Cannon Drive in the sixth position. According to the findings, December traffic accidents at the intersection from 2016-18 numbered 25 involving 80 passengers.

Those local statistics put the Austin intersection a notch above another hot spot in Texas, the High Five Interchange that has seen 24 traffic wrecks involving 76 passengers in the studied period — clinching the 7th spot on the list. But the dreaded Austin intersection is not as bad as another in the Lone Star State — the 4th-ranked Texas 75/Interstate 635 Interchange in Houston, with 24 wrecks involving 76 passengers from 2016-18.

Elsewhere, Atlanta took the top spot in terms of least-safe intersections. Its Interstate 20/Interstate 75/Interstate 85 Interchange, aka The Downtown Connector, has seen 52 accidents in the studied three-year period involving 165 passengers.

The 10th ranking went to Oklahoma City, more specifically its Northwest Expressway at Rockwell Avenue near the airport and mall with 13 accidents among 41 passengers.

"We think that with a little more data and analytics about locations you might avoid, it can make all of our holidays even better,” Kevin Pomplun, Chairman of Go Safe Labs, said in a prepared statement.

Using publicly available data from local, state and federal sources, Go Safe Labs isolated 201,348 accidents that occurred during the month of December from 2016 - 2018. Their data science experts then subset the data by city code and found the 10 highest accident counts by city — with hundreds occurring at complex and confusing highway interchanges, researchers noted.

The study's authors described the resulting data as being presented with granular detail that can help drivers make more informed driving decisions. To that end, Go Safe Labs’ analysis specifies the latitude and longitude coordinates for the holiday season’s top safety hot spots.

For example, analysts found that Austin’s I-35 at William Cannon Drive had 25 holiday season accidents at latitude 30.190359 and longitude -97.770462. These specific details can help drivers make more informed decisions as they travel for the holidays, officials said.

Researchers noted the number of estimated people involved in each accident was calculated based on average vehicle occupancy rates, and conservatively assumes two cars were involved in each accident.

Go Safe Labs’ full study can be found here.

ABOUT GO SAFE LABS

Go Safe Labs is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that uses data to advance transportation infrastructure and enhance public safety. By assembling and standardizing transportation data at the local, state, and federal levels, Go Safe Labs aims to serve the public interest by providing information and analysis that can improve transportation safety and optimize decision-making. Data sets analyzed by Go Safe Labs provide additional insight into public safety, public infrastructure, transportation safety, and mobile navigation.