Houston and Harris County crash statistics: 2025 annual report
TxDOT's 2025 counts of reportable, fatal and suspected-serious-injury crashes in Harris County and the City of Houston, NHTSA's fatality counts through 2024, and how to read them.
The short answer
TxDOT's 2025 tables, the latest complete year it has published, count 107,472 reportable crashes in Harris County. Of these, 477 were fatal crashes in which 503 people died, and 2,244 were crashes with a suspected serious injury. Inside the City of Houston, TxDOT counts 60,317 reportable crashes, 273 of them fatal with 293 deaths. NHTSA's federal fatality data, which runs through 2024, counts 551 fatal crashes and 583 deaths in Harris County that year.
This page is a citywide and county-wide summary. For particular roads and intersections, see our guide to Houston's highest-injury roads and the corridor pages linked below. It is general information about public data, not legal advice, and it says nothing about any particular crash.
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Start free intakeKey facts (data as of 2026-10-30)
- Data year. 2025 for TxDOT (crash reports processed as of April 7, 2026; the 2025 table files carry an August 19, 2026 last-modified date). 2024 for NHTSA, the newest year it has posted. We downloaded every file on 2026-10-30.
- Harris County, TxDOT 2025. 107,472 reportable crashes; 477 fatal crashes and 503 deaths; 2,244 suspected-serious-injury crashes and 2,630 suspected serious injuries.
- City of Houston, TxDOT 2025. 60,317 reportable crashes; 273 fatal crashes and 293 deaths; 1,249 suspected-serious-injury crashes and 1,465 suspected serious injuries. These are about 56% of the county's reportable crashes and 58% of its deaths.
- Texas, TxDOT 2025. 538,860 reportable crashes and 3,769 deaths. Harris County is about 20% of the state's reportable crashes and 13% of its deaths.
- Harris County, NHTSA FARS 2024. 551 fatal crashes and 583 deaths, 329 crashes and 348 deaths of them recorded in the City of Houston. People walking were 170 of the 583 deaths, and motorcycle riders 83.
- Counts, not risk. None of these numbers is a rate. They are not adjusted for population, traffic or road length.
- Method. We read TxDOT's PDF tables and NHTSA's CSV files on 2026-10-30 and recomputed every figure from them. The sources are listed at the end of this page.
- Data credit. NHTSA FARS data is a work of the U.S. government and is not under copyright (17 U.S.C. §105). TxDOT publishes its annual tables on its public statistics page. Please credit "TxDOT, Annual Texas motor vehicle crash statistics" and "NHTSA FARS".
- How to cite. InjuryClaimGuide, "Houston and Harris County crash statistics: 2025 annual report", data year 2025 (TxDOT) and 2024 (NHTSA FARS), retrieved 2026-10-30, https://getinjuryclaimguide.com/learning/houston-annual-crash-report
- Independence. These tables are InjuryClaimGuide's own arrangement of public figures. TxDOT and NHTSA did not produce or review them.
What did TxDOT count in Harris County and Houston in 2025?
TxDOT's annual tables sort every reportable crash by the most severe injury in it. The counts below are for 2025, from the county table (all of Harris County, inside and outside city limits) and the cities table (crashes recorded inside the City of Houston).
| Severity of the crash (most severe injury) | Harris County crashes | City of Houston crashes |
|---|---|---|
| Fatal | 477 | 273 |
| Suspected serious injury | 2,244 | 1,249 |
| Suspected minor injury | 10,308 | 5,173 |
| Possible injury | 17,473 | 12,649 |
| No injury | 73,155 | 38,296 |
| Unknown severity | 3,815 | 2,677 |
| All reportable crashes | 107,472 | 60,317 |
People, not crashes: in Harris County 503 people died and 2,630 had a suspected serious injury; in the City of Houston 293 people died and 1,465 had a suspected serious injury. About two-thirds of reportable crashes involved no injury (68% in the county, 63% in the city), and fatal crashes were well under one percent of the total (477 of 107,472 in the county; 273 of 60,317 in the city).
How do 2023, 2024 and 2025 compare?
TxDOT counts, same tables each year. Read the note under the table before comparing years.
| Year | Harris County reportable crashes | Harris County fatal crashes | Harris County deaths | Harris County suspected-serious-injury crashes | City of Houston reportable crashes | City of Houston fatal crashes | City of Houston deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 116,603 | 504 | 536 | 2,330 | 67,453 | 275 | 291 |
| 2024 | 115,173 | 546 | 579 | 2,282 | 66,236 | 318 | 339 |
| 2025 | 107,472 | 477 | 503 | 2,244 | 60,317 | 273 | 293 |
From 2024 to 2025 the county's deaths fell from 579 to 503 (about 13%) and the city's from 339 to 293 (about 14%); statewide, TxDOT's deaths went from 4,150 to 3,769 (about 9%). What this can say: the counted totals were lower in 2025 than in 2024 in each place. What it can't say: why. A change of this size can reflect real differences, differences in how many reports had been processed when each table was cut, or both, and these tables do not separate the two. The 2024 tables were cut as of April 9, 2025 and the 2025 tables as of April 7, 2026, each about three months after its year ended. The 2023 figures come from tables cut on the same April 2025 date, so 2023 had about a year longer than 2024 or 2025 to collect late reports. Late reports can still be added to any year: TxDOT's later cumulative statewide table lists 4,159 deaths for 2024, nine more than the 4,150 in the April 2025 table. Three years of counts are not enough to show a trend.
What does NHTSA count for fatal crashes through 2024?
NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) records fatal crashes. It counts a death if it happens within 30 days of the crash and covers fatal crashes only, and it is published later than TxDOT's tables. The newest year available on 2026-10-30 is 2024.
| Year | Fatal crashes, Harris County | Deaths, Harris County | Fatal crashes recorded in the City of Houston | Deaths recorded in the City of Houston |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 527 | 558 | 303 | 321 |
| 2023 | 505 | 537 | 279 | 297 |
| 2024 | 551 | 583 | 329 | 348 |
In 2024, 329 of Harris County's 551 fatal crashes (about 60%) were recorded inside the City of Houston. FARS and TxDOT differ a little for the same county and year (551 fatal crashes in FARS and 546 in TxDOT's table for Harris County in 2024) because the two systems collect and classify crashes in their own ways. We do not combine the two sources into one total.
Who died? FARS deaths by road-user type
FARS records the role of each person who died. These are counts of people in Harris County, with the share of that year's total in parentheses.
| Year | People in cars, trucks and other vehicles (not motorcycles) | People walking | Motorcycle riders and passengers | People on bicycles or other cycles | Other or unknown | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 278 (50%) | 177 (32%) | 79 (14%) | 17 (3%) | 7 (1%) | 558 |
| 2023 | 260 (48%) | 169 (31%) | 76 (14%) | 26 (5%) | 6 (1%) | 537 |
| 2024 | 305 (52%) | 170 (29%) | 83 (14%) | 17 (3%) | 8 (1%) | 583 |
In 2024, 170 of the 583 deaths were people on foot, 83 were on motorcycles (the FARS motorcycle group includes off-road motorcycles, motor scooters and three-wheel motorcycles) and 17 were on bicycles or other cycles. Inside the City of Houston the 2024 counts were 171 vehicle occupants, 116 people walking, 48 motorcycle riders and passengers, 8 cyclists and 5 others, 348 in all. Shares are rounded, and "other or unknown" combines personal conveyances, occupants not in transport and unknown occupant types. FARS also flags crashes in which a vehicle was recorded as a hit-and-run: 92 of Harris County's 551 fatal crashes in 2024 (90 in 2022 and 94 in 2023). Our guide to a hit-and-run crash in Texas explains the driver duties in the statute.
For the legal rules that apply to people walking and riding, see our guides to pedestrian accidents in Houston and bicycle accidents in Houston.
How to read this data (and what it can't tell you)
What counts as a "reportable crash." TxDOT's definitions page describes a reportable motor vehicle crash as a crash involving a motor vehicle in transport that occurs or originates on a trafficway and results in injury to or death of any person, or in damage to one person's property to the apparent extent its definition sets. Minor crashes below that threshold, and crashes nobody reported, are not in the tables.
Fatal and serious injury. A fatal crash is any injury crash with one or more deaths; a fatal injury is a death within 30 days. A serious injury crash is one whose most severe injury was a suspected serious injury, which TxDOT describes as an injury other than a fatal one that prevents the injured person from walking, driving or normally continuing their activities. The officer records the category at the scene.
City limits versus county. The county table covers every crash in Harris County, including unincorporated areas and the other cities in it. The cities table covers crashes recorded as inside the City of Houston. A crash is placed by the report's location entries, so some crashes near a boundary can fall on either side. The two tables are built separately, so do not treat the city figures as an exact subset of the county figures.
Two systems, two scopes. TxDOT's tables count all severities from crash reports and are published months after the year ends. FARS counts fatal crashes only, adds information from other records, and is published later. Treat them as separate sources.
Counts, not rates. A place with more people, roads and travel can have a larger count without any one trip there being riskier. This page does not use traffic volume or population.
Late reports and revisions. The newest year in each source can be revised: TxDOT notes its tables reflect reports "received and processed" as of a given date, and NHTSA posts the newest year as an annual report file that can change.
Not in this page. The City of Houston's Vision Zero layer of deaths and serious injuries ends in May 2024, so it is not used here for the latest year; we use it by road in the intersection study. We do not use crash-level details, contributing factors or anything that could identify a person.
Where do serious crashes cluster?
A county-wide total hides where crashes happen. Our road-by-road pages use the City of Houston Vision Zero layer and NHTSA FARS to give counts for each of the main Houston corridors:
- Houston's highest-injury roads: the hub, with a side-by-side table.
- I-45, I-10, the 610 Loop, Beltway 8, US-59/I-69 and SH-288.
- Intersections with repeated serious crashes, 2021-2023.
Those pages have their own data years (mostly 2018 to 2023 for the City layer and 2019 to 2024 for FARS), so do not add their counts to the ones above.
Where can I get a crash report?
The counts above come from Texas Peace Officer's Crash Reports (form CR-3). Under Tex. Transp. Code §550.062, a law enforcement officer who in the regular course of duty investigates a motor vehicle collision that resulted in injury, death or property damage above the amount the section sets must make a written report and file it electronically with TxDOT not later than the 10th day after the collision. The driver's duties at the scene start at §550.021 in the same chapter. The statistics here are totals only. Nothing on this page points to a particular crash or report.
- How to get a crash report in Houston gives each agency's steps and fees.
- How to get a Texas crash report (CR-3) covers the statewide process.
- How to read a Texas crash report explains the fields that become these statistics.
- Who may receive a Texas crash report (§550.065) quotes the statute on access.
What should be updated each year?
TxDOT's 2023 and 2024 tables carry May 2025 file dates and its 2025 tables carry an August 2026 file date, and NHTSA posts each year's file after that. We plan to re-read both sources each year, recompute every figure with the same method, and update the data-year labels and the retrieval date together.
Related Houston information
- Houston's highest-injury roads (crash data): the road-by-road companion to this page.
- Texas car crash law reference: the statutes that come up after a crash.
- A driver's duties after a crash (Transp. Code §550.021 and after): the statute text, quoted and explained.
- Truck accidents on Texas highways: Texas rules for crashes involving commercial trucks.
- Houston car accident information: local crash-report offices, courts and roads.
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Frequently asked questions
- How many people died in crashes in Harris County in 2025?
- TxDOT's 2025 county table counts 503 deaths in 477 fatal crashes in Harris County, from crash reports processed as of April 7, 2026. TxDOT counts a death if it happens within 30 days of the crash. These counts can rise slightly as late reports are processed.
- How many crashes were reported in Houston in 2025?
- TxDOT's 2025 cities table lists 60,317 reportable crashes in the City of Houston, including 273 fatal crashes in which 293 people died and 1,249 crashes with a suspected serious injury. Most reportable crashes involved no injury or a minor or possible injury.
- Why do TxDOT and NHTSA give different counts for the same county?
- They count differently. TxDOT counts reportable crashes from police crash reports (CR-3) for a calendar year and a place. NHTSA's FARS counts only fatal crashes, with its own record-building, and publishes later. For Harris County in 2024 TxDOT's table shows 546 fatal crashes and FARS shows 551.
- Do these counts rank Houston against other places?
- No. These are counts, not rates. The counts are not adjusted for population, traffic or road length, so they cannot rank places by risk or say why any crash happened.
- What is a suspected serious injury in this data?
- TxDOT's definitions page describes a suspected serious injury as an injury, other than a fatal one, that prevents the injured person from walking, driving or normally continuing the activities they could perform before the injury. The reporting officer records it at the scene, so it is a report category, not a medical finding.
- Why is 2025 the newest year here, when the federal fatality data stops at 2024?
- TxDOT's 2025 annual tables are built from crash reports processed through April 7, 2026, and the files show an August 19, 2026 last-modified date. NHTSA had not posted a 2025 FARS file when we checked on 2026-10-30, so its counts here end with 2024.
- Can I use these numbers in my own work?
- Yes, with credit. NHTSA FARS data is a work of the U.S. government and is not under copyright (17 U.S.C. §105). TxDOT publishes its tables on its public website. Please cite the source, the data year and the date we retrieved it, and say that the aggregation is InjuryClaimGuide's own and was not produced or reviewed by TxDOT or NHTSA.
Sources
- TxDOT, Annual Texas motor vehicle crash statistics (2025 edition and archive)
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries by County, 2025 (reports processed as of April 7, 2026)
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries, Cities and Towns, 2025 (reports processed as of April 7, 2026)
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries by County, 2024 (reports processed as of April 9, 2025)
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries, Cities and Towns, 2024 (reports processed as of April 9, 2025)
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries by County, 2023
- TxDOT, Crashes and Injuries, Cities and Towns, 2023
- TxDOT, Annual Motor Vehicle Crash Data Report Definitions
- TxDOT, Comparison of Motor Vehicle Traffic Deaths, Vehicle Miles, Death Rates, 2003-2025
- NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)
- NHTSA, FARS 2024 national data file (CSV; accident, person and vehicle tables, filtered to Harris County)
- NHTSA, FARS 2023 national data file (CSV)
- NHTSA, FARS 2022 national data file (CSV)
- City of Houston, Vision Zero
- 17 U.S.C. §105 (no copyright in works of the U.S. government)
- Tex. Transp. Code ch. 550 (§550.021 duty to stop; §550.062 officer's collision report; §550.065 release of collision reports)
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