Traffic across the barren West Texas landscape began skyrocketing around a decade ago, with barreling 18-wheelers, flatbeds, and tanker trailers snaking as far as the eye could see along a two-lane road through formerly sleepy prairieland. The Lone Star State was experiencing its latest oil boom, and the Permian Basin – home to a sparsely populated and unforgiving terrain – had become ground zero for fortune seekers, conglomerates, transport companies, roughnecks, and felons alike.
The exponential industry growth saw the number of rigs in the region jump from 92 in May 2009 to 565 in October 2014, clogging woefully unprepared roads. And as US 285 became the heartbeat of the bustling industries, it also earned a chilling nickname among locals: “Death Highway.”
A devastating 839 crashes were recorded between 2016 and 2021 on the northern stretch of 285, from Pecos to the New Mexico border, which saw a 34.5 percent increase in traffic during that same timeframe. The southern portion from Pecos to Fort Stockton recorded 540 crashes from 2015 to 2019, including ten deaths – with the road experiencing a 21 percent increase in traffic growth, according to Texas Department of Transportation (TxDot) figures.
As US 285 became the heartbeat of the booming oil industry, it also earned a chilling nickname among locals: “Death Highway.” The stretch from the New Mexico border to Fort Stockton, until that point, was where “tumbleweeds and cattle loitered along the fence line,” wrote Christian Wallace in his 2019 podcast Boomtown. Now, it looks like a scene from Mad Max, he added.
Despite comprising less than 2 percent of the state’s population, the Permian Basin was accounting for 12 percent of all traffic deaths by 2019. In 2022, TxDot recorded 26,031 crashes across the Permian Basin, resulting in 394 fatalities and 889 serious injuries. In contrast, before the explosion of oil and gas activities, the region in 2011 saw 18,019 crashes – only 169 of them fatal, according to figures from Texas A&M.
US 285 and 302 in Pecos recorded 32.17 collisions per 1,000 vehicles, Motive reported – calling the roadway “a magnet for oilfield traffic and hazardous weather.” Flames and plumes of black smoke have become common sights along “Death Highway” and other overcrowded Permian Basin roads, where truck-heavy traffic backs up for miles as first responders and life flights tend to accident victims.
State officials have been racing to address the issues that materialized almost overnight in a previously unruffled corner of Texas. Engineers and other state workers are desperately scrambling to expand road infrastructure. The main goal is widening the roads from one to two lanes in each direction, and progress has already significantly reduced the fatality rate in his district to the lowest number since 2010.
The aim is to reduce the frequent accidents caused by passenger cars or other vehicles trying to overtake slower-moving commercial vehicles – or failing to see trucks, for example, making sudden turns and stops. Lykins, the TxDot Odessa District engineer, pointed out that of 125 traffic fatalities in the 12 counties of his Odessa district last year, “roughly 45 of those were unrestrained occupants, which means the person that died didn’t have on a seat belt.”
In addition, alcohol and drug usage is rampant among drivers working hard and playing harder. Odessa topped the list of US cities with the highest rate of fatal drunk driving accidents, according to a study by a Philadelphia law firm using 2018-2022 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Nearby Midland came in sixth.
For Lykins, who despises the nickname Death Highway, it has become a “personal” mission to make US 285 and other overloaded roads of the Permian Basin safer. “We’re all fully invested” he said. “It means something to us – and people expect us to be making things better. We take it serious.”