The National Transportation Safety Board has completed its investigation of the February 2021 pile-up on 35W in North Fort Worth. The crash involved 133 cars. Six people died; 36 were hurt.
"Cars on the express lanes were going, like, 80 miles per hour," one man who was caught in the crash said that morning. "Once they blocked the expressway, that's when these 18-wheelers, who were going way too fast, started hitting everybody else."
NTSB said "deficient monitoring of icy roads" and speeding led to the crash.
The report said North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners pretreated lanes 44 hours before the crash. The morning of the crash, NTSB says crews with NTE Mobility Partners "spot-treated some sections of roadway with salt, but they did not treat the elevated portion of I-35W where the multi-vehicle crash occurred."
NTE Mobility Partners said it "strongly disagrees" with NTSB's conclusion.
"NTE35W technicians drove through the area of the accident within 45 minutes before the first indication of rain in the incident areas. We pretreated all sections of I-35W--as well as the rest of the 40 miles of highway corridors we operate and maintain in North Texas," NTE Mobility Partners' Robert Hinkle wrote in an email to KRLD.
Hinkle said NTE Mobility Partners works with TxDOT on best practices for snow and ice control. He said the company's crews pretreated its mileage "well within the prescribed pretreatment window and during the storm."
NTSB's report acknowledges the company "applied the solution to the two southbound toll lanes about 44 hours before the multivehicle collision occurred." NTSB also said the company posted alerts on dynamic message boards before the crash, reading, "ICY CONDITIONS EXIST/PLEASE USE CAUTION."
NTSB said the company's pre-treatment of the highway was "reasonable," but it was "deficient" in monitoring conditions. NTSB says the company "failed to detect that the elevated portion of I-35W required additional deicing treatment on the morning of the crash when precipitation arrived in the area."
Hinkle said, when crews drove through the area around the crash 45 minutes before rain started falling, they did not see any signs of ice or previous precipitation.
"Video footage from the morning of February 11 confirmed that precipitation began mere minutes before the accident unfolded," he writes.
In addition to issues with the monitoring of icy roads, NTSB said speed was a factor.
"Had drivers been traveling slower, they would have had more time to react and possibly avoid the crashed vehicles ahead. Reduced speeds would also have lessened the severity of the crashes once the vehicles began to slide on the icy road," the report said.
NTSB recommends the Texas legislature pass a law allowing for variable speed limits, install environmental sensors to "enable timely response to hazardous road conditions during inclement weather," and start a winter weather training program for toll road operators.
NTSB also "reiterated" earlier recommendations for Texas to use automated speed enforcement and for federal agencies to improve connected vehicle technology that could warn drivers about crashes ahead of them.
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