The Most Dangerous Roads in Texas

Are accidents more likely to happen on some roads than others? Find out the top 50 most dangerous roads across the entire state.

These charts show the top 50 most dangerous roads in the state based on reported accidents.

Interstate 10 topped the list as the most dangerous road in 2023, with a staggering 13,763 crashes. Interstate 45 and Interstate 35 followed with 11,173 and 10,506 crashes, respectively.

Many of the most dangerous Texas roads are Interstate Highways. These serve vital roles in today’s US transportation network, providing high-speed routes for long-distance travel and transport. They also span many of Texas’s regions, cities, towns, and beyond, so it is not surprising many accidents in the Lone Star State occur on these roadways.

Interstate Highway 35E

Interstate Highway 35E (I-35E) is a branch of I-35 that passes through Dallas and Fort Worth. Despite being a much shorter highway, it was nonetheless the site of 5,012 accidents from January to September.

U.S Highway 290

U.S. Highway 290 (US0290) is a major highway — some 261 miles long — spanning the West Texas town of Iraan in Pecos County to Houston. Along the way, it passes through Junction, Fredericksburg, Austin, and Brenham and intersects with I-10 and I-35. Far fewer accidents happened on US0290 compared to Interstate Highways of a similar length, with a total of 3,467.

Interstate 2 and U.S. Highway 83

U.S. Highway 83 (US 83) is a pivotal roadway extending from the Canadian border in North Dakota to the Mexican border in Texas. Its nickname, “The Road to Nowhere” originates from its route through the Great Plains, though it spans the entire South Texas valley from its southern terminus in Brownsville. In Harlingen, Cameron County, it merges with Interstate 2 (I-2), which serves as the principal east-west corridor in the Rio Grande Valley and traverses the Hidalgo County cities of Mercedes, Weslaco, Donna, Alamo, Pharr, McAllen, Mission, and Peñitas.

In Penitas, US 83 passes through Starr and Zapata, then on through Laredo, Uvalde, Junction, and Wellington. At the Oklahoma state line, US 83 continues north through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

US 83 saw 1,801 accidents occur in Texas in 2023, though far more (2,153) occurred on the 47 miles comprising I-2 — unsurprising given the breadth of the RGV it covers.

The Most-Cited Contributing Factors to Texas Auto Accidents

What causes motor accidents in Texas? Find out how many crashes happen due to speeding, driver inattention, fatigue, and more.

When a reportable accident occurs in Texas — any accident that causes injury or death must be reported immediately — an investigating officer will create a police report. In this report is a space for the officer to document one or more contributing factors. There are 70 total factors officers can select, ranging from driving while intoxicated to speeding, or officers can add their own. The crash report is vital evidence in a personal injury claim because it can demonstrate how the accident happened and who might be at fault.

So what are the most commonly cited contributing factors for accidents in the Lone Star State?

Driver inattention, failure to control speed, changing lanes unsafely, and failure to drive in a single lane were the most cited factors at a state level. Failed to control speed was the leading contributing factor, cited in 89,529 accidents, but add to that the 13,133 accidents cited as being caused by “unsafe speed”, and the 688 cited as “speeding (over limit)”, and it’s clear that speeding is a significant concern in Texas.

Drilling down at a county level reveals some interesting insights. In Bexar County, the most commonly cited primary contributing factor to accidents in 2023 was driver inattention. Cited in 10,030 accidents, Bexar contributes to over 25% of the state total. Bexar was also the most dangerous county for drivers who were fatigued and fell asleep (330), had road rage (129), and were texting while driving (22).

In Harris County, the leading factor (excluding “no data”) was backing without safety, responsible for 4,884 accidents, followed closely by driver inattention (4,540).

In Hidalgo County, where our McAllen office and many of our clients are based, the leading contributing factor was failing to control speed, causing 4,018 accidents — notably taking it to the third spot on the list behind Harris and Dallas. Backing without safety was the second most cited factor, resulting in 1,202 crashes.

Harris, Dallas, and Bexar top the county counts for most individual contributing factors — understandable given their higher accident counts overall.

The Most-Cited Contributing Factors by Month

What causes motor accidents in Texas? Find out how many crashes happen due to speeding, driver inattention, fatigue, and more.

We know that May was the most dangerous month for crashes in Texas in 2023, but what were the most common causes of these accidents?

Failed to control speed topped the list at 10,899, consistent with the leading contributing factor across the whole nine months (January to September). Many crashes cited “no data”, with over 4,500 crashes in May caused by driver inattention.

Driver License State and Type

Thousands of accidents occur across Texas each year, but not all drivers are from Texas. Find out where drivers involved in accidents are from and what type of license they have — or if they even have licenses at all.

As is to be expected, most drivers involved in accidents had Texas licenses. For many accidents — 201,308 — the driver’s license was unknown or not recorded (no data), while 10,035 drivers had licenses in Mexico, just across the Texas border. Interestingly, a substantial number of drivers had licenses from California (5,745) and Florida (5,488) — more than neighboring states including New Mexico (5,228), Oklahoma (4,110), and Arkansas (3,252).

In terms of license type, most motorists had driver’s licenses. Over 100 thousand drivers — 103,090 — did not have a license.

In 2023, the Texas Department of Transport introduced a new filter to its Crash Report Information System: when an accident scene was cleared. Using this data along with the exact time of each crash, we’ve calculated the time taken to clear the scene, giving insight into the types of crashes that take longer to clear.

This data — taken from crashes that occurred after March 31st, 2023, when this police report field was introduced — reveals that well over half of all crashes in Texas (182,265) were cleared within one hour after the event, with 95,519 cleared within one to two hours. There is then a big drop off, with far fewer crashes taking longer than three hours to clear.

Charges Issued against Drivers

What charges were issued against drivers by law enforcement? We look at the most commonly issued charges to determine the most prevalent driver behavior issues in Texas.

When law enforcement arrives at an accident scene, they may charge drivers with certain offenses for driving violations, from driving while intoxicated (either alcohol or drugs) to speeding.

Of the hundreds of thousands of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians involved in auto accidents in Texas from January to September, many were not charged.

Other top charges included driving without a license, correlating with the high number of motorists involved in crashes who did not have a valid license, and driving while intoxicated.

The Severity of Injuries Sustained in Texas Auto Accidents

How many accidents result in no injuries versus those that are, tragically, fatal? Which counties are more dangerous in terms of injury severity? We break down the data, comparing 2023 to 2022, to see where the most severe accidents occur and, ultimately, whether Texas roads are becoming safer.

An auto accident can cause a range of injuries. Many are lucky to walk away from a crash with no physical injuries, but others sustain life-changing injuries such as traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and burns.

Then, there are the injuries you can’t see — months or years of post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and mental anguish. This emotional impact can be equally devastating, causing injured parties to become withdrawn, which can impact their work and relationships with loved ones. Tragically, many auto accidents are fatal.

What Each Injury Severity Means

Law enforcement classifies each injury according to the KABCO scale, created by the Federal Highway Administration to evaluate the severity of an auto crash. Each letter of the scale corresponds to a severity type as follows:

K- Killed
A – Suspected serious injury
B – Suspected minor injury
C – Possible injury
O (or N) – Unknown

In Texas, an additional category — 99 — denotes unknown injuries.

Each state categorizes injuries differently. In Texas, crashes are assigned a severity as follows:

• K: if an individual dies from injuries sustained in a crash within 30 days of the accident.
• A: If an individual suffers a severe or incapacitating injury that prevents them from performing normal activities. Example injuries include broken limbs, internal injuries, or a crushed chest.
• B – Minor or non-incapacitating injuries are those that are physically evident but do not affect the injured party’s ability to do normal activities, such as bruises, abrasions, and minor lacerations.
• C – Possible injuries do not result in physical wounds but are reported by an individual or indicated by behavior. Possible injuries can include limping, headaches, or complaints of pain.
• O/N – This severity is assigned to a crash when an individual does not sustain a severe, minor, or possible injury.

The “unknown” category is reserved for crashes where it is impossible to determine whether a person has been injured, such as if they failed to stop and render aid, fled the scene, or were the negligent driver in a hit-and-run accident.

Injury Severity By County

At a total level, 310,520 crashes in 2023 resulted in the people involved sustaining no injuries, up from 243,864 in 2022. Given the increase in overall crashes, this is a positive sign, indicating that many accidents were not severe.

However, reported injuries also increased. Crashes causing suspected minor injuries increased from 39,762 in 2022 to 54,230 in 2023 to date, while possible injuries increased from 50,084 to 63,227, and suspected serious injuries increased from 9,211 to 11,818.

In terms of deadly accidents, there were 2,383 fatal crashes in 2022. In 2023, fatal accidents totaled 2,869. This may seem like a modest increase, especially considering the much higher numbers of other injuries — the more severe of which can have a devastating impact on an accident victim’s quality of life — but we must not forget that these numbers represent at least an additional 486 individuals — assuming single-vehicle crashes, although we know from the data that most crashes involve multiple vehicles — whose lives were tragically taken in auto accidents — and in many cases, due to the negligent actions of another.

Person Injury Severity

When looking at every individual involved in an auto accident in 2023 versus 2022, the number of those who sustained injuries increased, as did the number of those who were not injured.

Again, this correlates with the overall increase in crashes. Fatalities increased by 534, from 2,646 to 3,180. Because we know that there were 486 more deadly crashes year on year, we can now determine that several crashes resulted in multiple fatalities.

Possible injuries increased by 21,840 (100,878 in 2023 versus 79,038 the year prior), while suspected minor injuries increased from 54,355 to 74,723. The number of people sustaining suspected serious injuries increased by a much smaller margin, from 11,363 to 14,450.