5 individuals have been hit by automobiles in San Antonio final weekend. Three didn’t survive.
A kind of incidents, one was a hit-and-run. They occurred all throughout the town.
It would sound like rather a lot for only one weekend — and it’s. However in San Antonio, it’s not precisely out of the abnormal.
Auto-pedestrian crashes are literally down this yr. From January via the top of June, there have been 377 crashes involving individuals strolling or biking, in line with information from the Texas Division of Transportation CRIS Question System.
That’s a drop from the current mid-year excessive of 449 in 2024, and even decrease than the 399 and 383 midyear totals from 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Regardless of the drop within the variety of crashes, the variety of fatalities hasn’t budged. By the top of June, 29 individuals had been killed in 2025 — the identical mid-year complete as in 2023, however with 22 fewer crashes.
Police studies from final weekend echo patterns seen in recent times: high-speed roads, restricted lighting, and little to no pedestrian infrastructure. Two of the deaths occurred in areas not designed for foot visitors — highways and main corridors. One other concerned a pedestrian crossing a busy highway with no crosswalk. The remaining two crashes occurred at evening: one sufferer was on foot, the opposite on a motorbike.
And final yr, crashes like these have been extra widespread than ever.
In 2024, San Antonio noticed 917 crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists — the very best prior to now three years. The yr ended with 66 fatalities, barely fewer than the 71 recorded in each 2022 and 2023.
The town’s transportation division factors to a rising inhabitants as a part of the explanation why there are such a lot of auto-pedestrian incidents.
“Roughly 50,000 individuals transfer to San Antonio yearly, which means extra automobiles, extra pedestrians, extra bikes,” stated Catherine “Cat” Hernandez, transportation division director, in an e-mail. “People are going to make errors, behind the wheel or strolling throughout the road. “
Whereas the division tracks developments citywide, Hernandez famous that 60% of pedestrian crashes occur outdoors of the town’s jurisdiction — on TxDOT roadways like U.S. Freeway 90, I-10 and I-35 — and are usually not included in San Antonio’s Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan, a method first adopted in 2015 to eradicate all traffic-related deaths.
The opposite 40% of crashes occur on city-managed streets, the place the division says its security efforts can have extra influence.
On the finish of 2024, Metropolis Council handed updates to each Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan and the town’s Full Streets Coverage, geared toward shifting road design away from car-first planning. Then in Might, constructing on the Bike Community Plan adopted earlier within the yr, council created the Multimodal Transportation Fee — a brand new advisory group to assist information the implementation of safer road design.
A few of that work is already underway. With federal grant funding, the town is planning pedestrian security upgrades alongside Zarzamora Road and piloting a “Fast Construct” infrastructure program that goals to ship security enhancements at a fraction of the price and time.
As San Antonio rolls out its new plans and commissions, the query stays: Will it’s sufficient to guard individuals strolling and biking on roadways?
