Texas truck crashes happen in the cities. They kill in the countryside. Harris County has more commercial vehicle crashes than anywhere else in the state, but your chance of dying in one of those crashes more than doubles once you leave the big metros.
We went through the Texas Department of Transportation crash file for 2025 and ranked all 254 counties. Here is what the numbers show.
Source: TxDOT Crash Records Information System, calendar year 2025.
Where the crashes happen
Crashes follow traffic. The counties with the most trucks on the road have the most crashes, and Harris County leads by a wide margin with 5,913. That is one commercial vehicle crash every 89 minutes, all year.
Most commercial vehicle crashes, 2025
Total commercial vehicle crashes by county.
Webb County stands out. Laredo sits there and is the busiest land port in North America for truck freight, which explains 746 crashes. Of those, 4 killed someone, up from 1 the year before even as Webb's crash count fell.
Where the crashes kill
Now flip the question. Instead of asking where crashes happen, ask how often a crash turns fatal. The picture reverses.
Statewide, about 1.2 out of every 100 commercial vehicle crashes killed someone. In Harris County it was 0.69. In Leon County, on I-45 between Dallas and Houston, it was 9.41.
Deadliest counties per 100 crashes
Fatal crashes per 100 commercial vehicle crashes. Counties with fewer than 50 crashes are left out so one bad wreck does not distort the rate. Texas average: 1.22.
Tarrant, Travis
249 counties
About three out of five crashes. More than three out of four of the deaths.
Why? This file records the county and how badly people were hurt, so it cannot prove a cause. Crash research points to higher rural speeds, two-lane roads with nothing separating oncoming traffic, and longer waits for an ambulance. Treat those as likely reasons, not findings of this study.
The Houston region
The same pattern shows up close to home. Harris County has the crashes. Most of the counties around it have the higher death rate per crash.
| County | Crashes | Fatal | Per 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberty | 154 | 5 | 3.25 |
| Fort Bend | 489 | 7 | 1.43 |
| Chambers | 239 | 3 | 1.26 |
| Waller | 165 | 2 | 1.21 |
| Brazoria | 250 | 3 | 1.20 |
| Harris | 5,913 | 41 | 0.69 |
| Galveston | 250 | 1 | 0.40 |
| Montgomery | 674 | 1 | 0.15 |
Red means worse than the Texas average of 1.22. Green means better.
A truck crash in Liberty County was more than 4 times as likely to be fatal as one in Harris County. Montgomery came out lowest in the region at 0.15.
What changed from 2024
Every headline number came down. Statewide crashes fell from 39,393 to 38,533, a drop of 2.2 percent. Fatal crashes fell harder: from 546 to 469, down 14.1 percent. Deaths fell from 608 to 528. The statewide fatal rate improved from 1.39 to 1.22 fatal crashes per 100.
The map shifted too. Tarrant County posted the largest increase in the state, from 1,716 crashes to 2,183. Harris County posted the largest decrease, falling from 6,313 to 5,913. It still leads every other county by thousands. Travis County moved into the top ten for total crashes, displacing Hidalgo.
The deadliest-county ranking turned over completely. Frio County, which topped the 2024 rate at 10.71 fatal crashes per 100, logged 47 crashes in 2025 and fell below the 50-crash floor we require before ranking a county. Leon County now tops the list at 9.41.
Look up any county
All 254 counties are below. Type a county name to find it, or click a column heading to sort.
| County ⇅ | Crashes ⇅ | Fatal ⇅ | Deaths ⇅ | Per 100 ⇅ |
|---|
Use this data
Reporters, researchers, and safety groups are welcome to these numbers. Download the full file, cite the source, and link back.
Download the CSV ↓Need last year for comparison? The 2024 county file is still available.
Texas Truck Accident Lawyer (2026). Texas Truck Accident Statistics by County: 2025 TxDOT Crash Data. Analysis of Texas Department of Transportation Crash Records Information System data.
How we did this
We used the TxDOT report titled Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Involved Crashes and Injuries by County 2025, covering all 254 counties. TxDOT builds that file from crash reports police file statewide on form CR-3. If one of those crashes is your own, here is how to get your Texas crash report. The numbers reflect reports processed as of April 7, 2026.
A crash counts as commercial vehicle involved when the officer marks the CMV box on the report. That definition turns on vehicle weight, hazardous cargo, or passenger capacity. Semis, box trucks, dump trucks, tankers, and buses all qualify. For the exact test, see TxDOT’s CR-3 instruction manual, because the threshold differs from the commercial vehicle definitions in the Texas Transportation Code and in the federal safety regulations.
The per 100 rate is fatal crashes divided by total crashes, times 100. Counties with fewer than 50 crashes are excluded from the rate rankings, because one fatal crash in a county with eight crashes would show up as 12.5 percent and mean nothing.
Every column in our dataset adds up to the statewide totals TxDOT published, and each county row passes internal consistency checks. The 2024 edition of this dataset remains available for download above, so year-over-year comparisons can be checked against both files.
What this data cannot tell you
Only crashes police reported are here. Texas Transportation Code section 550.062 requires a report when a crash causes injury, death, or apparent property damage of $1,000 or more. The county is where the crash happened, not where the trucking company is based. The file has no roadway detail, so it cannot say which highways are worst. And the federal government publishes its own Texas truck crash counts using different rules, so those totals will not match these. Do not mix the two.
One more caution about the comparison between metros and everywhere else. The 2.2x figure compares the share of crashes that turned fatal, not the number of deaths per crash. Measured on deaths per crash instead, the gap is about 2.1 times.
Reviewed August 22, 2026 against the 2025 TxDOT county report linked above. TxDOT revises crash counts as late reports are processed, so figures can shift slightly in later editions of the file. This page is a statistical analysis and is not legal advice about any particular claim.
If a truck crash has already happened to you
Numbers matter less than a clock most families never hear about. Federal rules require a trucking company to hold on to the driver's duty records, dispatch records, and electronic logging data for only six months. Vehicle inspection reports can go after three. Onboard crash data can be written over the next time the truck goes back in service.
That clock starts the day of the crash, while families are still in hospitals. A letter demanding the company preserve those records is the first thing a lawyer sends, and it has to go out early to matter. Our Houston and 18-wheeler crash pages explain how those records get used, and our deadlines page lays out every clock that runs after a Texas truck crash.
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Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.