A woman in her 70s has died after being struck by a vehicle while crossing Thousand Oaks Drive on San Antonio's Northeast Side. San Antonio police say she was rushed to a hospital just after 11 a.m. Tuesday but later died from her injuries, and the driver who hit her stopped at the scene to render aid.
According to WOAI, the crash happened near Thousand Oaks Drive and Uhr Lane, and the story remains developing as police continue investigating. Separately, KENS 5 reports that San Antonio police responded around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday to the 4300 block of Thousand Oaks Drive, where the woman was struck while in a crosswalk. That outlet reports the driver cooperated with investigators, and police described the incident as a tragic accident with no criminal charges pending.
Under Texas law, drivers are required to stop and yield the right-of-way to pedestrians crossing within a marked or unmarked crosswalk when no traffic signal is in operation, per Crain Brogdon Injury Attorneys. Texas also enacted the Lisa Torry Smith Act in 2021, which makes operating a vehicle with criminal negligence in a crosswalk and causing bodily injury or death a criminal offense ranging from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony, according to an analysis from the Texas State Legislature. It remains unclear from available police accounts whether the crosswalk at 4300 Thousand Oaks Drive had signalized pedestrian controls or warning lights, or whether speed or visibility played a role in Tuesday's crash.
A Corridor With a Troubled Recent History
Tuesday's crash is not the first serious wreck on Thousand Oaks Drive this year. In February, a driver traveling at a high rate of speed near U.S. Highway 281 struck a tree and died after the vehicle caught fire, as previously reported by Hoodline. Then in August, another driver crashed into an unoccupied dental office in the 2800 block of the same street, per the same account from KENS 5.
Those back-to-back incidents underscore broader concerns about speed and roadway design along the Thousand Oaks corridor. San Antonio recorded 66 pedestrian fatalities out of 916 pedestrian-involved crashes in 2024, maintaining what the San Antonio Report describes as a consistent annual toll of roughly 70 pedestrian deaths citywide. The outlet also notes that about 60% of the city's pedestrian collisions occur on state-managed TxDOT roadways rather than city-controlled local streets, a jurisdictional split that complicates municipal Vision Zero efforts.
City Pushes Crosswalk Safety Campaigns Elsewhere
The City of San Antonio's Transportation Department launched a public awareness campaign called Keep Crossings SAfe in November, using federal Safe Streets for All grant funding to improve crosswalk safety and driver awareness across high-risk corridors, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The department also introduced an interactive High-Injury Network Dashboard in December, built from TxDOT crash data spanning 2018 through 2022, to help map severe and fatal crash hotspots for public and municipal planning use, per KSAT.
Just days ago, the city installed three new Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons on Pleasanton Road through a $3 million TxDOT grant, engineering upgrades specifically designed to protect elderly residents crossing wide roadways, according to the City of San Antonio. Whether similar infrastructure could eventually reach Thousand Oaks Drive remains an open question, as does how neighborhood infrastructure in that part of the Northeast Side accommodates elderly pedestrians who rely on its crosswalks.
No charges are expected in Tuesday's crash, and police have described it as a tragic accident. The investigation remains ongoing.
