McGregor, Texas (KWTX) – A Central Texas mother says she had worried for years about the possibility of a vehicle crashing into her home. Early Saturday morning, that fear became reality when an SUV slammed into her house on Sixth Street in McGregor.
The frightening experience is raising questions about how often vehicles crash into homes and businesses, what causes these incidents and whether some could be prevented.
Melody Price was asleep around 1:30 a.m. on October 18th when she heard tires screeching, followed by several loud crashes.
“While we were sleeping, we heard like screech of tires and then just three loud booms,” Price recalled.
She immediately feared a vehicle was coming through her home.
“I automatically knew what it was and got in the fetal position,” Price said. “It sounded like the car was gonna come all the way through.”
The impact was so powerful that items hanging on the wall in her bedroom fell on top of her.
The SUV struck near her oldest son’s bedroom, a particularly frightening detail for Price. Neither of her children was home when the crash happened.
“Thankfully neither of my kids were home,” Price said. “Because this is my oldest kid’s room and he would have taken the direct impact.”
According to the McGregor Fire Department, no one was injured in the crash.
Price said the location of her home along a busy roadway had previously made her concerned about the possibility of a vehicle leaving the street.
“Because it’s such a busy road, I’ve kind of worried about that before,” she said.
A son struggles to believe the damage
Price’s youngest son, Dylan Sutherland, was staying at his father’s house when the SUV crashed into the family’s home.
When his father told him what had happened, Sutherland struggled to believe it.
“So I went to go look and I thought it was like AI. I didn’t think it was real,” he said.
Seeing the damage firsthand was an emotional experience.
“Like when I actually got here,” Sutherland said, pausing as he became emotional. “I just love this house.”
For the family, the damage represents more than a financial burden. Their home, once a place of comfort and security, became the scene of a frightening crash.
Vehicles crashing into buildings across Central Texas
The McGregor family is not alone in experiencing a vehicle striking a residential structure.
KWTX has also reported on a vehicle crashing into a home in Harker Heights.
Commercial properties have experienced similar incidents.
On Sept. 8, a vehicle crashed into the Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home building in Temple, causing damage to the property. No injuries were reported.
These incidents highlight a broader safety issue that one national organization has spent years researching.
The Storefront Safety Council, founded in 2011, collects information about vehicles crashing into commercial buildings and other nonresidential locations across the United States.
The organization’s co-founder, Rob Reiter, estimates that more than 100 such incidents happen nationwide every day, or approximately 36,000 annually.
Reiter emphasized that his organization’s database does not track residential crashes, meaning incidents involving homes, such as the one in McGregor, are not included in those statistics.
What the numbers show in Central Texas
The Storefront Safety Council’s partial historical database includes dozens of documented vehicle-related incidents in Central Texas.
According to the organization’s records, the database identifies:
Waco: 34 incidentsTemple: 17 incidentsKilleen: 13 incidents
Combined, the three cities account for 64 entries in the council’s partial database.
The figures cover multiple years and should not be interpreted as annual totals or a comprehensive count of every crash involving a building.
Reiter said the organization collects information from media reports, law enforcement agencies, fire departments and other records. He acknowledged that the database captures only a portion of the incidents that occur.
Why do vehicles crash into buildings?
According to Reiter, two of the leading reported causes in his organization’s research are pedal error and operator error.
Pedal error occurs when a driver mistakenly presses the accelerator instead of the brake. Other operator errors can include mistakes made while maneuvering a vehicle.
Reiter said the design of commercial parking lots can increase the risk, particularly when parking spaces face directly toward storefront windows or entrances.
He identified restaurants and retail businesses as two of the most frequently represented commercial categories in the council’s Texas research.
“There are certain categories of stores that get hit more often than anybody else in Texas, and restaurants are number one, and retail stores are number two,” Reiter said.
He explained that drivers pulling into parking spaces directly in front of businesses can accidentally accelerate over curbs and into storefronts.
Reiter also identified high-speed intersections, corner locations and certain roadway layouts as potential risk factors.
Those findings describe broader patterns in commercial crashes. Authorities have not established the cause of the McGregor crash in the information provided to KWTX for this report.
Can these crashes be prevented?
Reiter believes protective barriers and improved property design can help reduce the risk of vehicles crashing into commercial buildings.
One solution involves installing bollards, which are sturdy vertical posts designed to stop or redirect vehicles before they strike a building.
“So bollards are vertical posts,” Reiter explained. “They can be made out of lots of things, but they tend to be steel. They’re usually three or four feet high, and they’re designed to stop a vehicle.”
Reiter said some major retailers, including Walmart and 7-Eleven, have installed protective barriers at their locations.
He said newer commercial developments are increasingly incorporating these safety features, although many older buildings remain without similar protection.
The effectiveness of bollards depends on factors including their construction, installation, the size of the vehicle and its speed.
Reiter also pointed to local ordinances and building design requirements as potential ways to improve safety, particularly at businesses with outdoor seating or pedestrian areas near vehicle traffic.
However, he acknowledged that changes can be slow because of construction costs, building requirements and other considerations.
Protecting residential properties presents different challenges. Reiter’s research focuses on commercial locations, and determining appropriate safety measures for an individual home would require evaluating its specific location and roadway conditions.
Picking up the pieces
Back in McGregor, Price and her children are now faced with the task of repairing their damaged home and moving forward.
Despite the frightening experience, Price said she is grateful that her family escaped without injuries.
“Nobody was harmed, everybody walked away and it’s just going to be a financial loss at this point,” she said.
For Price, the damage to her home serves as a reminder of how quickly an ordinary night can turn into a life-changing experience.
And for families and businesses across Central Texas, the larger question remains: What can be done to reduce the risk of another vehicle crashing into a place where people expect to be safe?
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