Driving frustrations: Numbers show spike in crashes

roadways lately? does it seem people are driving worse? if you feel that way, you’re not alone. abc-7’s maria garcia is live with a story … you’ll see only on abc-7. we asked the el paso police department for numbers of crashes investigated. these red and blue lines show crashes for 2013 and 2014. not a lot of variation here. an average of about 12-hundred crashes a month. but look at 2015. it’s this green line. there’s a big spike in crashes for every single month. with more than 14- hundred crashes every month. so what gives? 02:45 there’s some pretty bad drivers here. 03:00 the crashes are increasing. the numbers back up that last statement. while we were shooting this story downtown – we saw someone driving on the wrong side of the road!! 05:02 that has to do a lot – the construction – there’s a lot of roads closed here or people have to go around or take main streets that area already full of cars constant construction downtown, throughout the westside, and on several areas of i- ten often leave drivers inpatient fighting for space. and can lead to bumper to bumper traffic. and then there are the usual offenders. 04:30 i get mad when people are just driving slow and they’re in my way just to get to work. there’s some people that speed a lot too. 08:00 people on the phone. they get distracted and they’re mostly on the phone – that’s a lot of the problem right here right now so is this a pattern? hard to tell. look at this year so far. 2016 started with more crashes than last year. this dip here in march is based on numbers police gave us several days before the end of the month. so we’ll have to see. abc-seven is working to get the mugshot of a 23- year-old accused of