SAN ANTONIO - This Labor Day weekend San Antonio will be swarming with the usual influx of tourists. But landmarks like the Alamo and River Walk are also becoming known for something else - traffic accidents.
The News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooters made this discovery when we recently mapped accident locations and discovered that you're more likely to get in a crash when driving in downtown.
"It's a tough place to drive," says cab driver Tony Brooks.
He's seen a lot of accidents caused by a confused driver going the wrong way. "You really have to drive the area to know it. We drive it everyday and even we have to be careful," says Brooks.
An analysis of a crash database from the Texas Department of Transportation obtained by the Trouble Shooters shows downtown streets around the River Walk and Alamo are hot spots for traffic accidents. This first of its kind analysis of hundreds of accidents from 2007 to 2009 was done with the help of the investigative website Texas Watchdog. Their sophisticated software was able to group wreck locations - showing the worst spots in yellow.
One of the worst is the intersection of College and St Marys streets. Many tourists go this way to get into the hotel driveway, and that's when the accidents happen.
But not all of the accident hotspots are around the River Walk. Another one just outside downtown is the confusing intersection where three streets converge along Main street.
I tried to speak with someone in the city's public works department about the crash data. They didn't want to go on camera, but now say they're adding it to their list of projects to investigate.
And of course some of the other locations that make the list are well known to local drivers, including the intersection of I-10 and Loop 1604.
“It is a nightmare, and we are very much aware of it,” says TXDOT spokesperson Laura Lopez.
TXDOT say a fix is many years away, but is in the works for this outdated clover leaf that causes so many accidents. “Several years ago that was the current standard. That was the current design, and things have changed with the number of accidents,” says Lopez.
Here are some other bad spots for accidents:
Stretch of I-10/I-35 (S Pan Am Expressway) roughly between Christus Santa Rosa Health Care-Downtown and the Univ of Tx at San Antonio campus.
The area northwest of downtown on I-410 where it merges with Ingram Road and Wurzbach Road. Google Maps says Ingram Park Mall is in a hairpin-shaped curve right there.
