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 2024 and ranked all 254 counties. Here is what the numbers show.
Source: TxDOT Crash Records Information System, calendar year 2024.
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 6,313. That is one commercial vehicle crash every 83 minutes, all year.
Most commercial vehicle crashes, 2024
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 885 crashes. Only one killed anyone.
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 1.4 out of every 100 commercial vehicle crashes killed someone. In Harris County it was 0.65. In Frio County, on I-35 south of San Antonio, it was 10.71.
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: 1.39.
Tarrant, Travis
249 counties
Fewer than two thirds of the crashes. Four out of five 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. The counties around it have the higher death rate per crash.
| County | Crashes | Fatal | Per 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberty | 137 | 3 | 2.19 |
| Brazoria | 283 | 5 | 1.77 |
| Chambers | 221 | 3 | 1.36 |
| Montgomery | 671 | 8 | 1.19 |
| Harris | 6,313 | 41 | 0.65 |
| Waller | 203 | 1 | 0.49 |
| Galveston | 229 | 1 | 0.44 |
| Fort Bend | 605 | 2 | 0.33 |
Red means worse than the Texas average of 1.39. Green means better.
A truck crash in Liberty County was more than three times as likely to be fatal as one in Harris County. Fort Bend came out lowest in the region at 0.33.
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 ↓Texas Truck Accident Lawyer (2026). Texas Truck Accident Statistics by County: 2024 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 Involved Crashes and Injuries by County for calendar year 2024, covering all 254 counties. TxDOT builds that file from crash reports police file statewide on form CR-3. The numbers reflect reports processed as of April 9, 2025.
A crash counts as commercial vehicle involved when the officer marks the CMV box on the report. TxDOT’s instructions to police define a CMV as a vehicle meeting any one of three tests: 10,000 pounds or more, transporting hazardous material, or a capacity of nine or more. Semis, box trucks, dump trucks, tankers, and buses all qualify.
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.
What this data cannot tell you
Only crashes police reported are here, meaning 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.
Calendar year 2024 is the most recent annual summary TxDOT has released as of August 2026. We will update this page when the 2025 file publishes.
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.
No fee unless we win.