One person is dead and another is recovering in the hospital after a two-vehicle crash shut down a stretch of road near Pace Bend Road and State Highway 71 in western Travis County on Thursday morning. Austin-Travis County EMS said the wreck was reported around 8:30 a.m. in the 1300 block of South Pace Bend Road, and crews who responded found injuries severe enough that one adult could not be saved.
Medics pronounced that adult dead at the scene, according to KEYE. A second adult involved in the crash was transported to St. David’s South Austin Medical Center with injuries described as not life-threatening.
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office said the crash would take hours to clear and urged drivers to seek another route while crews worked the scene. No additional details about what led to the collision, who was involved, or the specific road closures have been released.
Pace Bend Road Has Seen Serious Crashes Before
Thursday’s wreck is not the first serious crash to snarl traffic in the area. In September 2022, a two-vehicle crash on South Pace Bend Road left one person seriously injured and trapped inside a vehicle, according to a separate report from cbsaustin.com. That crash shut down the road in both directions for nearly an hour while first responders worked to clear the scene.
In that 2022 incident, Austin-Travis County EMS responded around 11:08 a.m. to 102 South Pace Bend Road, and Travis County’s Star Flight helicopter arrived within five minutes. The injured person was airlifted to Dell Medical Center with serious injuries that were not expected to be life-threatening. The earlier case underscores how crashes along this corridor have repeatedly forced extended traffic restrictions, though it remains a separate incident from Thursday’s fatal crash.
Travis County adopted a countywide Safe Streets and Roads for All Safety Action Plan in June 2025, with a commitment to reduce fatal and serious-injury crashes by 50% by 2035 and eliminate them by 2050. The plan identifies 59 priority project locations and recommends 74 policy and process changes, but each participating jurisdiction or agency decides which recommendations to implement. The county’s safety plan focuses on unincorporated areas and partner jurisdictions, alongside Austin’s separate Vision Zero plan.
The fatal crash comes amid a broader countywide safety challenge: from 2019 through 2023, Travis County recorded 701 fatal crashes and 2,974 serious-injury crashes. Of those fatal crashes, 237 occurred outside Austin city limits; the figures cover the county as a whole and do not establish a crash pattern specific to Pace Bend Road. The county’s crash data analysis also found that 31% of fatal and serious-injury crashes in that period occurred outside Austin.
What Remains Unknown
Officials have not released the identities of either person involved in Thursday’s crash, nor have they said what caused the collision or whether any citations were issued. The exact boundaries of the road closure and the time the route reopened to traffic also have not been made public. Drivers in western Travis County are advised to check for updates before heading toward the Pace Bend Road and Highway 71 area.
