Pflugerville Boys Grazed By Car Alerts To Growth-Fueled Traffic Along Kelly Lane

PFLUGERVILLE, TX — A Pflugerville mom reported Wednesday her son and his friend were grazed by a car in one of the city’s most busy intersections before the motorist drove off.

In a telephone interview with Pach, Crista Swier said her 10-year-old son and his friend were walking across with their bicycles on Kennemer Drive at Kelly Lane just after 10 a.m. when a blue Audi A4 four-door struck them.

The boys were walking along a crosswalk with the pedestrian signal alerting them of their ability to cross. But the car lunged forward, making impact with the boys were escaped uninjured. Swier said the driver exited his vehicle to check if there was any damage to his vehicle, gave the boys a thumbs-up sign and drove off.

The boys, meanwhile, had collected themselves and fearfully run to the curb for safety, she said. A police report was made, but officials told the woman there was nothing they could do as a 911 call wasn’t immediately placed from the scene.

The incident casts a spotlight on one of the busiest — if not the busiest — intersections in Pflugerville. It also highlights the bolstered traffic along the stretch, continually exacerbated by the city’s growth as evidenced by the adjacent Fairways of Blackhawk subdivision comprising hundreds of homes.

The highly trafficked intersection also is in close proximity to three schools clustered close together — Murchison Elementary, Kelly Lane Middle and Hendrickson High School — only adding to residents' concerns.

“People fly through that intersection,” Swier said, noting the high rates of speed for cross-traffic along Kelly Lane prompt drivers to quickly turn from Kennemer Drive to enter the main artery.

The California transplant pointed to the subdivision of some 1,000 homes in making a contrast to what she views as inadequate infrastructure in the vicinity in light of such growth.

“It’s poorly designed for the amount of homes there,” Swier said of the surrounding patchwork of roads in the vicinity. “The biggest complaint is that the developers didn’t design enough streets in that community. There’s a ton of kids out there.”

Pflugerville spokeswoman Terri Toledo disputed the notion suggesting the intersection is the sole point of access to the growing subdivision. In an emailed response to questions, she said there are actually two main access points to the handful of subdivisions in the area.

"Kennemer Drive is one of two entrances to the Fairways of Blackhawk from Kelly Lane," Toledo wrote, providing a map as illustration. "There is Kennemer Drive and then Vilamoura Street, which is in the county, but is another option. From the north, residents can come from Rowe Lane via Treyburn Lane or Martin Lane as there is extensive roadway connectivity through the subdivisions there."

She suggested a quick Google search to view the various routes provided via Rowe Lane or Kelly Lane throughout the area. Mutiple roadways reach the various Blackhawk subdivisions — Fairways of Blackhawk, Blackhawk, Park at Blackhawk, and Lakeside at Blackhawk — Toledo said.

"There is a web of road interconnectivity between SH 130 / Rowe Lane/ Hodde/and Kelly Lane," the spokeswoman added. "Some Blackhawk subdivisions are adjacent to Falcon Pointe on the west and then Avalon to the east."

Brisk growth at Blackhawk mirrors citywide expansion as more are lured to settle there. Toledo confirmed that Fairways of Blackhawk has about 469 lots with overall housing units already built numbering 1,182 with another 2,319 housing starts remaining to be built for a total of 3,501 homes once built-out is complete.

It also doesn't help matters, in terms of traffic, that Pflugerville is one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau last year, Pflugerville emerged as the 11th fastest-growing city in the nation among municipalities with populations of 50,000 or more. The city's growth is emblematic of broader expansion in Central Texas as a whole, growing by 22.5 percent from 2010 to 2016, according to Census figures.

Pflugerville residents have long complained of heightened traffic at Kelly Lane, so much so that a specially designed Facebook page dubbed “Kelly Lane Pflugerville Happenings” was created for people to commiserate. It was on that page that Swier first shared her story to alert neighbors.

A mother of four children ranging in age from five to 14 years old, Swier and her husband moved their family about a year ago from California to Pflugerville, where they operate a tire business. Not unfamiliar with the terrain given frequent business trips before making Pflugerville their home, Swier said she and her husband have educated their children on safety when negotiating city streets. One tip she’s given her children is to seek eye contact with a driver stopped at an intersection to ensure the motorist knows they’re crossing.

“We have talked with him before about making eye contact with the driver to make sure he’s communicating with the driver,” she said. “I’m assuming he [the driver] was stopped at the light and texting,” she added.

Indeed, police told Swier such incidents are becoming more common given the ubiquitous nature of cellular telephones. Invariably, texting drivers will accelerate as soon as they’re done texting in a momentary lapse in awareness to their surroundings, police told Swier.

During their house-hunting, she and her husband moved close to the schools to allow their children to walk to and from campus. Knowing their children would be on foot, the couple went so far as to take their kids on test runs of a sort in observing how they negotiated city streets.

“We’ve always sate and watched them because it scared me to death they would crossing Kelly Lane,” Swier said.

The incident with her child happened days after two girls were struck by a Ford pickup truck in nearby Taylor, Texas, killing one of them at the scene, before the driver fled. That tragic incident on Saturday alerted Swier that the incident involving her boy could’ve been far worse, heightening her anxiety but inspiring her to alert other parents to the dangers.

The imminent start of school later this month will offer some relief to worried parents, as crossing guards will soon be dispatched there during the day. But at other times, it's essentially every child to himself.

“Generally, the kids in this neighborhood are pretty safe," Swier said. "But it’s a busy street.”

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