Devin Downey | Sep 18 2026 21:49

The Texas Counties Where Truck Crashes Happen Most: North Texas, 2025

Dallas County had 3,778 crashes involving big trucks and buses in 2025, the most of any county in North Texas. Tarrant County was second with 2,183.

Put all twelve North Texas counties together and you get 9,452 crashes, which is almost one out of every four in the whole state.

But the biggest numbers are not the whole story here. The most surprising part of this data sits near the bottom of the list.

Where these numbers come from

All of these numbers come from the state. TxDOT publishes a yearly count of truck and bus crashes in every Texas county as part of its annual crash reports. The counts come from the crash reports police fill out at the scene.

One thing to know. The state counts more than just 18-wheelers. Box trucks, buses, and other large work vehicles are in here too. The federal government tracks the same kinds of crashes in its Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts report.

This article shares public safety data. It is not legal advice.

North Texas counties, ranked

Rank County Truck and bus crashes Deadly crashes Deaths Serious injury crashes
1 Dallas 3,778 33 37 101
2 Tarrant 2,183 15 16 63
3 Denton 948 5 5 19
4 Collin 684 7 7 19
5 Ellis 360 4 5 14
6 Rockwall 259 1 1 3
7 Parker 233 1 1 6
8 Hunt 224 2 2 8
9 Kaufman 223 3 7 13
10 Johnson 208 2 2 7
11 Wise 201 5 6 10
12 Grayson 151 4 5 10

The surprising part: the safest-looking counties are the deadliest

Dallas and Tarrant have the most crashes, which makes sense. They have the most people, the most freight, and the most highways.

Now look at the same data a different way and ask how often a crash turns deadly.

In Dallas County, fewer than 1 out of every 100 truck crashes killed someone. In Grayson County, it was closer to 3 out of every 100, and Wise County was almost the same.

Read that again. A truck crash in Grayson County was about three times more likely to kill someone than a truck crash in Dallas.

A second state agency found the same thing. Texas health officials track crash injuries through hospital and ambulance records rather than police reports. They found that truck crashes happen in rural areas more often than car crashes do, and that almost 4 out of every 10 happen late at night, between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

(Those two agencies count crashes differently, so their totals do not match. They still point the same direction.)

Why country roads are more dangerous

Think about what a rural crash actually looks like.

Cars move faster because there is no traffic to slow anyone down. Roads are often just two lanes, which makes a head-on crash far more likely. Help is farther away too, so the ambulance takes longer to arrive and the nearest trauma hospital may be an hour off.

City crashes are different. Most happen in slow, heavy traffic, and while people still get hurt, fewer of them die.

Kaufman County shows how bad a rural wreck can get. It had only 3 deadly truck crashes in 2025, and those 3 crashes killed 7 people. That means more than one person died in the same crash.

Tarrant County saw a jump

Tarrant County had 2,183 truck crashes in 2025. In 2024, the same state report counted 1,716. That is about 27 percent higher in one year.

Dallas County went down slightly in that same period. So did Harris County, the biggest in the state.

We want to be careful here. One year of change does not prove a trend. Sometimes these numbers shift because of how crashes get reported. It is worth watching in next year's data.

What this means for you

Freight does not spread out evenly. Some roads carry far more trucks than others.

In North Texas, that means I-35W through Tarrant and Wise County. It means I-20 and I-45 near the Dallas shipping hubs. It means US-75 and US-380 through Collin and Grayson, where new neighborhoods keep going up next to truck routes.

Denton County had 948 truck crashes last year. Collin had 684. Those are big numbers for counties most people think of as quiet suburbs.

Here is the takeaway. The road where you are most likely to be in a truck crash is not the road where you are most likely to die in one. Slow down on rural highways at night. That is where the odds turn against you.

What to do if a truck hits you

Truck crashes are not like car crashes. The rules are different, and so is what you are up against.

Trucking companies often send a team to the scene within hours. They take photos, talk to witnesses, and start building their side of the story that same day.

Meanwhile, the proof you need can disappear. Trucks record how long the driver was on the road. Federal hours-of-service rules limit driving time, and 49 CFR Part 395 spells out those limits. Most of it gets logged by an electronic logging device in the truck, and companies are allowed to erase some of those records after a set number of days.

There can also be more than one company at fault: the driver, the trucking company, the business that loaded the trailer, and the shop that was supposed to fix the brakes.

A few things help:

  1. Call the police and get a crash report.
  2. See a doctor, even if you feel fine. Some injuries show up days later.
  3. Take photos of everything, including the truck and any company name on it.
  4. Do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company's insurance.
  5. Talk to a lawyer quickly, so a letter can go out telling the company to save its records.

We go deeper on our pages about driver fatigue and hours-of-service violations and black box and ELD evidence. We also have an evidence preservation checklist after a Texas truck accident you can work through right now.

Talk to Bryan Green and his team

If your family has suffered a death, traumatic brain injury, spine injury, or other life-changing harm in a crash involving an 18-wheeler or commercial vehicle, Bryan Green Law handles a limited number of serious cases across Texas.

There is no charge to talk, and you owe nothing unless we win. Time matters in these cases, so please do not wait.

Bryan Green built his practice on truck and commercial vehicle cases, including cases out of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Call us or reach out through our contact page to set up a free case review.

Are you a lawyer with a truck case? See our co-counsel and referral page.

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