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Read related reports in our joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media News 88.7.

Vilma Marenco called her husband after she finished the lunch shift at Pappasito's restaurant on April 22, promising to return before he had to catch a flight to a job in New Orleans. "Wait," she said. "Because I want to see you and kiss you before you leave."

Marenco was less than a mile from home in Houston when the driver of an oilfield hauling truck, without a motor carrier license or any insurance, ran a red light on Old Beaumont Highway. The tractor-trailer, laden with metal pipe, struck and crushed the driver's side of Marenco's 15-year-old Chevy Cavalier, police reports and photos show.

She died so near home that her husband heard the screech of tires and the crunch of metal from inside their two-story house, where he'd been waiting with his bags packed. But Guillermo Gomez must have called his wife's number 25 times that afternoon before a neighbor arrived to confirm what he'd feared: Vilma would never be home again.

For six decades, highway deaths have dropped steadily all across the United States - as more Americans buckled up, tucked small children into safety seats and acquired passenger cars equipped with air bags. But in Texas all motor vehicle fatalities - and accidents involving commercial trucks - have turned back upward since the state's oil drilling and fracking boom began in 2008. In fact, consistently since then, Texas has led all states in motor vehicle deaths, surpassing California as the previous national leader, U.S. Department of Transportation records show.

Between 2009 and 2013, Texas traffic fatalities climbed 8 percent from 3,122 to 3,378 while fatalities in most other states continued to decline. Traffic deaths linked to commercial vehicle crashes in Texas have risen dramatically by 51 percent, from 352 in 2009 to 532 in 2013. The trend in deadly wrecks shows no signs of slowing in 2014, crash data indicates.

Numbers tell the tale

There's no way to tell from Texas traffic accident data just how many passenger cars or commercial vehicles that crashed can be linked directly to the state's oil and gas boom. But records show that fatal accidents increased more in the groups of counties that make up the Permian Basin and in those affected by the Barnett and Eagle Ford shale plays, where busy roads regularly fill with tractor-trailers, tanker trucks and commercial vans hauling water, workers and supplies to oil and natural gas well sites, as well in urban counties that serve as burgeoning hubs for the oil field industry.

Motor vehicle fatalities reported in the West Texas counties associated with the Permian Basin increased more than 50 percent from 2009-2013. Deaths rose 11 percent in Eagle Ford counties as well as in Barnett Shale counties, according to subtotals the Houston Chronicle computed and compared for each multicounty area from Texas Department of Transportation crash data.

In urban Midland County alone, traffic fatalities increased 47 percent from 30 to 44 deaths. Traffic deaths in Bexar County, which serves as both a medical and transport hub for the Eagle Ford, rose 24 percent from 2009-2013, from 152 deaths to 188. In Harris County, recorded traffic deaths went from 341 to 368 - up 8 percent or about the same as the state average.

Each year, state troopers participating in a special trouble-shooting program conducted by the Department of Public Safety called "Road Check" have found that 27 to 30 percent of Texas' commercial trucks shouldn't be operating at all due to potentially life-threatening safety problems like defective brakes, bald tires, inoperable safety lights and unqualified, unfit or intoxicated drivers. Year after year, a higher percentage of Texas trucks fail to meet federal and state road safety standards than the U.S. average, inspection statistics gathered by the Houston Chronicle show.

Audit had no effect

The driver of the rig that sideswiped Vilma Marenco's Cavalier on Old Beaumont Highway on April 22, killing her almost instantly, was linked to an unlicensed Houston trucking company called R & F Quality Transportation that had failed a DPS safety audit in December 2013. Auditors targeted the company after troopers ticketed its drivers for a multitude of violations - including using unsafe vehicles and employing a driver who smoked pot on the job, records show. The company continued to deploy defective trucks and accumulate tickets even after flunking that audit.

After Marenco died, a trooper inspecting the 18-wheeler that crushed her Chevrolet found a dozen defects, including faulty lighting and brakes. Three of those problems were severe enough to render the truck unsafe for commercial service, the report shows.

Benny Agosto, a Houston attorney who represents Marenco's husband and her 10-year-old daughter, Lupita, said in the Marenco case, the "trucking company's behavior demonstrates a callous, willful, and wanton disregard for the safety of Texans on our roads and highways. This behavior cannot be tolerated and must be stopped."

The state's rising motor vehicle death toll has drawn particular attention in formerly rural counties in the Eagle Ford and in the Permian Basin.

But fatalities related to commercial trucking accidents - and multiple fatalities with three or more victims - have noticeably increased, on roads that serve busy drill sites as well as on major highways - like Interstate 20 - that traverse the entire state, even as oil and natural gas workers tend to crisscross the state on their way to and from the oil fields and fracking sites, accident data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle shows.

DPS public records show troopers have doubled the audits performed on trucking firms and have increased truck inspections since 2009. But DPS spokesman Tom Vinger refused multiple requests by the Houston Chronicle and by Houston Public Media to interview the head of the agency's Commercial Vehicle Enforcement service regarding the rise in crashes tied to the oil and gas boom.

Industry has standards

Many Texas transportation companies offer extensive driver training programs and work hard to uphold safety standards. Inexpensive computer technology allows even small companies to track drivers' progress, prevent speeding, monitor sudden stops and enforce seatbelt use in real time, said Pete Sullivan, a trucking safety consultant for Advanced Analysis Associations who analyzes accidents involving commercial vehicles, including Marenco's.

But some firms scrimp or ignore safety to meet deadlines and customer demands, records related to recent accident investigations show.

John Esparza, president of Texas Trucking and a member of the Texas Freight Advisory committee for the Texas Department of Transportation, is part of a group advising state leaders on trucking safety that urged legislators in 2013 to pass a law designed to help prohibit firms with low safety ratings from staying in operation simply by changing their names. But other recommendations remain under study by TxDOT and others. The agency has reduced speed on some heavily traveled oil field roads and pushed legislators for funding to accelerate repairs on others. Spokesman Veronica Beyer said addressing increased traffic fatalities is a department priority.

In late August, a Harris County jury awarded an Atascosa County man and his daughter $6 million in damages, after finding that negligence by Houston-based Rig Runners Inc. and its driver caused a serious 2011 accident that nearly killed both as they rode together on a motorcycle on an Eagle Ford highway. Public records and a transcript of the truck driver's deposition indicate that he was a heavy drinker and methamphetamine user who'd lied about his drug use and was not drug-tested before being hired as one of the company's oil field service drivers.

During the driver's 15-month career, he never properly inspected his truck for defects at the end of shifts, as required by law, according to trial testimony and the Harris County court documents.

Inspection records show the driver, Bryan Bell, had been previously cited in trucks with nonworking lighting and other vehicle defects by state police.

'His Special Lady'

On the day of the accident, he either failed to notice or ignored that his rear turn signals did not work. When Bell pulled off a road shoulder and into the path of Roberto Gallegos' motorcycle to initiate a wide left turn, Gallegos had little time to respond, according to trial testimony.

The truck sideswiped Gallegos, mangling his leg and injuring his 9-year-old daughter, who was riding behind him. The collision sent him and his child flying into a ditch.

Alana Gallegos remembers lying there beside her father's still body. Her leg was broken. Her father couldn't move or speak. She feared he was dead.

But when she reached for his hand, he squeezed hers in return. They held on until a helicopter ambulance arrived 45 minutes later.

The Gallegos' League City attorney Scott Krist said he thinks their frightening case illustrates a bigger public safety problem. "This state is currently inundated by this semi-tractor traffic and these folks are not paying the kind of safety and attention to these (inspection) records that they need to ... It's a real danger, it's a real problem, and people are getting hurt on a regular basis. Something needs to be done to increase scrutiny of these trucks.""

A large framed image of truck driver Guadalupe Quintanilla and his beloved rig - shiny red and freshly waxed - sits on the mantel over the fireplace in a newly built brick home his wife and daughter now share on acreage they bought just outside Harlingen. Their home, ringed by golden hay fields, gleams at sunset. It's the place Quintanilla dreamed of building for years before he'd died in a preventable two-truck head-on collision on a lonely stretch of highway in Jim Hogg County in October 2010.

Rebecca Quintanilla, his wife of 28 years, remembers how carefully he greased and tended the tractor-trailer he owned and called "His Special Lady." "He would not have gone out in a truck with bald tires," his daughter, Franny, said. "As far as I'm concerned it's irresponsible."

Police found another driver - and defective tires - responsible for the crash that killed both men. The accident occurred after a driver for a now defunct company called Turn Around Trucking blew a tire while driving a rig loaded with 80,000 pounds of flammable oil-based mud. He lost control and crossed in front of Quintanilla.

Terrible safety record

The collision caused a massive explosion that produced a black cloud visible by officials patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border 50 miles away. Both drivers were ejected and their bodies burned. It took a week to identify them using DNA for burial, according to accident reports and related court records. Records show Turn Around Trucking had a terrible safety record prior to the 2010 crash. In 2010-2011, dozens of inspections uncovered serious safety problems in its fleet of 15 trucks, including bad brakes and blown out tires. Still, the company had managed, barely, to pass state audits.

After the accident, Ernesto Gutierrez, a former trucker who owned the company until April 2011, admitted his drivers received almost no training. Although his firm produced a safety manual after the accident, Gutierrez later disclosed that it had been photocopied from a Houston-based company's website and had his own firm's name slapped on the cover, according to a copy of a videotaped statement provided by attorney Jorge Herrera, of San Antonio, who represents the Quintanillas.

Name etched in stone

Gutierrez had never read the "manual," which referred to additional "books and VCR tapes" available from another company's Houston "corporate headquarters," according to that statement. Turn Around Trucking was based in Premont Texas, population 3,000. Though a company with a similar name still exists, it is unrelated to the 2010 operation, according to state records and a company official.

At a cemetery just a few minutes away from the Quintanilla home, another image of Quintanilla and his rig is etched in a headstone. His widow, Rebecca, says she still talks to him every day. It's impossible for her to accept that he might still be alive if another trucking firm had spent a little more on tires. "We still cry. We still laugh," she says. "To me he's irreplaceable."

In Houston, Gomez and his 10-year-old daughter, Lupita, regularly drive by the intersection where Vilma Marenco was killed by a driver in an unsafe, unlicensed truck with no insurance. The site is blocks from Lupita's elementary school, where her mother arrived each afternoon to pick her up. After the funeral, Guillermo Gomez removed all of his wife's clothing, her favorite knickknacks and nearly every photo of her from their house. It hurt too much to see them. He keeps a single portrait, inside the front door where he waited on the afternoon she was killed.

Beside her image, a candle burns.

"This has left a great emptiness ... for my daughter and me," Gomez said. "The only thing I am asking for is a thorough investigation of all of this ... and that there be justice."

This is a joint investigation between the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media News 88.7. Houston Public Media Business News reporter Andrew Schneider and staff writer Matt Dempsey contributed to this report.