Texas truck crashes in FMCSA data, 2021 to 2025

Key findings

• The FMCSA Crash File lists 97,403 crashes involving a large truck in Texas from 2021 through 2025. Those crashes killed 3,824 people and injured 55,747. Texas had more truck crashes and more truck crash deaths than any other state.
• Texas accounted for 12.0% of the 809,354 U.S. truck crashes in the file, but 14.4% of the 26,633 deaths and 14.3% of the fatal crashes.
• 3.5% of Texas truck crashes in the file were fatal (3,396 of 97,403), compared with 2.9% in the other states combined.
• Over the five years, Texas truck crashes killed 3,824 people, about 1.8 times the 2,170 recorded in California, the state with the next highest count.
• Harris County (Houston) had 11,905 truck crashes, 12.2% of the Texas total, followed by Dallas (7,874), Tarrant (5,232) and Bexar (4,866) counties. Every one of Texas’s 254 counties recorded at least one.
• Truck crashes in the 14 Permian Basin counties rose from 927 in 2021 to 1,117 in 2025 while the statewide count fell, and 5.6% of Permian truck crashes were fatal (295 of 5,275).
• Of the 106,370 trucks in Texas crash records, 67.6% belonged to carriers based in Texas and 28.2% to carriers based in other states. Tractor-semitrailers were 52.8% of all trucks in the records and 58.0% of the trucks in fatal crashes.
• The file has one record per truck or bus, not per crash. Adding up deaths across records would overstate Texas truck crash deaths by 679 (17.8%), because a crash with two trucks appears twice.

By year

Of the 97,403 Texas truck crashes, 40,781 injured at least one person and 54,503 involved no death or injury and are in the file because a vehicle was towed. Crashes fell 11.9% from 2021 to 2024, and deaths fell 13.9%; nationally the drops were 7.6% and 10.4%. Treat 2025 as provisional: states keep adding records after the fact (5.7% of the 2021 Texas records were added more than 180 days after the crash), so 2025 counts are likely to rise. These are counts, not rates. The file has no miles driven or trucks registered, so a change can reflect more or less freight moving as much as safer or less safe driving.

Texas against other states

Texas leads on both counts, which is partly a matter of size. The sharper difference is severity. 3.5% of Texas truck crashes in the file were fatal, against 2.9% in the other states combined. The file does not say why. Rural highway speeds, the mix of trucks and how completely each state reports minor tow-away crashes can all move that ratio.

By county

The 15 Texas counties with the most truck crashes. Counties come from the county code on each crash report. 3,036 crashes (3.1%) have no county recorded and are left out of the ranking. Every county is in the county CSV.

Midland is the only county in the top 15 with more truck crashes in 2025 than in 2021. Across the 14 Permian Basin counties (Andrews, Culberson, Ector, Glasscock, Howard, Loving, Martin, Midland, Pecos, Reagan, Reeves, Upton, Ward and Winkler), truck crashes rose from 927 to 1,117, and 295 of the 5,275 crashes over the five years were fatal (5.6%, against 3.5% statewide). That is the road exposure behind oilfield trucking insurance and the Midland and Odessa markets.

Why counties and not cities: the file's city field reads "NOT LISTED" for 37,393 of the 97,403 Texas truck crashes (38.4%), so a city ranking would leave out more than a third of them. Among crashes with a city, Houston (7,213), Dallas (4,500) and San Antonio (4,075) lead.

Whose trucks

The figures in this section count trucks, not crashes: 106,370 truck records across the 97,403 crashes, 3,840 of them in fatal crashes. Each record carries the carrier's address state and FMCSA's interstate flag for that carrier.

Two in three trucks in Texas crashes belong to Texas carriers, and more than one in four come from carriers based in other states. Among the Texas-based carriers' trucks, 23,283 (32.4%) are flagged intrastate, carriers whose insurance filing goes to TxDMV; see Texas intrastate insurance requirements. FMCSA labels the X flag "non motor carrier" without further detail, so we report it as coded. 1,632 truck records (1.5%) showed a hazardous materials placard, and hazardous materials were released in 459; see hazmat trucking insurance.

What kind of truck

Cargo body types as coded on the crash report, using the labels in FMCSA's Crash File data dictionary. Counts are truck records. 52 records with a blank or "not applicable" body type are left out.

Vans and enclosed boxes (which include reefers and box trucks) lead because there are more of them on the road, not because they are riskier; the file has no exposure data to compare types fairly. By configuration, tractor-semitrailers were 56,162 of the trucks (52.8%) and 2,226 of the 3,840 trucks in fatal crashes (58.0%). Two-axle, six-tire single-unit trucks were 21,343 (20.1%) and 832 in fatal crashes (21.7%).

What this means for insurance

Truck liability underwriters price two things: how often a fleet's trucks will be in a crash, and how bad the crash will be when it happens. This file speaks to both. Texas has the most truck crashes of any state and a higher share of them are fatal, and a fatal or serious injury crash is the kind of claim that can exceed a primary limit.

The federal floor is fixed in regulation. Under 49 CFR 387.9, a for-hire interstate carrier of non-hazardous property in vehicles of 10,001 pounds or more must carry $750,000 of liability; oil and many hazardous materials require $1,000,000, and certain bulk hazardous materials $5,000,000. That minimum is a filing requirement, not a measure of what a serious crash can cost, which is why fleets layer limits above it. See primary truck liability, umbrella and excess and why brokers ask for $1 million.

Your own crashes are in this same file, under your USDOT number, and underwriters see them. Look up what your record shows with the DOT number lookup, and if a renewal went up after a crash, see what to do when your renewal goes up.

Method

• Source: the FMCSA Crash File on data.transportation.gov (dataset aayw-vxb3), the public extract of state-reported crashes in FMCSA's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). A crash is reportable when a truck or bus is involved and someone dies, someone is injured and taken away for immediate medical treatment, or a vehicle is towed from the scene.
• We downloaded every record in all states with a crash date from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2025: 948,979 records, matching the dataset's own row count for that range. Data pulled October 30, 2026. 2026 is a partial year and is not included.
• One record is one truck or bus (with its carrier) in a crash, not one crash. FMCSA's dataset description says multiple records for the same crash share a report number. We grouped records by report number: the 112,238 Texas records collapse to 102,899 crashes, and 8,574 crashes (8.3%) have more than one record.
• We checked that choice. In all 8,574 multi-record Texas crashes, every record carries the same death count, injury count, tow-away flag, county and city. Six Texas report numbers carry two records with the same vehicle sequence number and different crash dates, which look like corrected resubmissions of one crash; grouping counts each once, under the earlier date. Each crash takes the death and injury counts on its records (the highest, where they differ). Across all states, 210 of 60,445 multi-record crashes disagree on deaths, mostly in Mississippi. Taking the lowest count instead of the highest would cut the U.S. death total by at most 243, which would put Texas's share of deaths at 14.5% instead of 14.4%.
• A truck crash is any crash with at least one record coded as a truck (FMCSA truck/bus indicator T). The file covers commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds and vehicles displaying a hazardous materials placard. Bus-only crashes (5,496 in Texas over the five years) are excluded from the headline figures. U.S. totals are computed the same way.
• We confirmed the crash counts a second way, by asking the dataset's own query service to count distinct report numbers. Every Texas year matched exactly, as did the five-year U.S. total of 809,354.
• Counties were named with the U.S. Census Bureau's Texas county code list. Cargo body type and vehicle configuration labels come from FMCSA's Crash File data dictionary (revision 5, November 2025).

Limits

• Deaths and injuries are everyone killed or hurt in the crash, inside or outside any vehicle, including people in cars and pedestrians. The file does not assign fault, so these are crashes that involved a truck, not crashes a truck caused.
• States add and correct records over time. Recent years, 2025 in particular, will grow as late reports arrive. Our numbers reflect the file as of October 30, 2026.
• The file is built from police crash reports and depends on how completely each state reports, especially minor tow-away crashes. Comparisons between states reflect reporting as well as safety.
• NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System is the federal benchmark for traffic deaths and counts differently, so totals here will not match FARS-based figures.
• Counts are not rates. The file has no miles driven, trucks registered or freight volume.
• We did not name carriers. Individual records, including carrier names and USDOT numbers, are public in the file.

Questions about the data or a custom cut for your county or operation: contact us. Texas Trucking Coverage explains insurance, not law. Coverage is placed through a licensed Texas insurance agency.