Six Dead in Four Crashes: Thursday Became One of the Austin Area's Deadliest Days on the Road
Two road workers and a young driver died before sunrise on SH 71. By the end of the day, a pickup driver near Spicewood, a cyclist in East Austin and a motorcyclist on Menchaca Road were also dead - four unrelated crashes in about 17 hours.
Thursday was a grim day on roads around Austin: four separate crashes, spread from the Bastrop County line to the Hill Country to South Austin, killed six people. The deadliest came first, in the dark before sunrise. At about 5:30 a.m., a westbound Nissan sedan crossed into the restricted construction area on State Highway 71 at Tucker Hill Lane and struck two workers building the Texas Department of Transportation's $58.5 million overpass project, according to investigators cited by CBS Austin and the Austin American-Statesman. Both workers - employees of Jordan Foster Construction - died, and so did the driver, a 26-year-old woman. TxDOT closed all westbound lanes at 5:37 a.m., and the Department of Public Safety is leading the investigation.
About three hours later and some 40 miles west, a two-vehicle crash in the 1300 block of South Pace Bend Road near the Briarcliff Marina killed a second driver. Austin-Travis County EMS said the crash, reported at about 8:30 a.m., involved a commercial motor vehicle and a pickup truck. Medics pronounced the pickup driver dead at the scene; the other driver was taken to St. David's South Austin Medical Center with injuries that were not life-threatening. DPS has not released the pickup driver's identity or said what caused the collision.
The evening took two more. Just before 7 p.m., Austin police investigated a fatal crash involving a vehicle and a bicyclist near Loyola Lane and Decker Lane in East Austin, KXAN reported. Then, at about 10:30 p.m. in South Austin, a motorcyclist died after colliding with an SUV that was pulling out of a shopping center at 11200 Menchaca Road, near Ravenscroft Drive. Police said bystanders performed CPR until emergency crews arrived, but the rider died at the scene; the SUV driver stayed and cooperated with investigators.
Each crash is still under investigation, and nothing publicly released so far links them - different places, different vehicles, different circumstances. Together they underline two standing warnings. The SH 71 corridor east of Austin carries more than 50,000 vehicles a day east of SH 130 and has seen other fatal crashes this year, and work zones put the people building the roads in the traffic's path. TxDOT said it was deeply saddened by the loss of three lives in the morning crash and reminded drivers to use caution in construction zones, obey signs, avoid distractions and never drive impaired. Authorities have not released the names of any of Thursday's six dead.
