Houston Auto Accident Statistics & Cost

TxDOT's published annual crash statistics, drawn from its Crash Records Information System, which compiles the CR-3 crash reports officers file across Texas. The two documents used here are Crashes and Injuries by County 2024 and Crash Contributing Factors 2024, and both are linked beneath the tables. We read the figures from those documents rather than from a summary, because a number quoted second-hand is a number nobody has checked — and a real figure attached to the wrong year or the wrong category is the most common error in published statistics.

It is a severity classification recorded by the investigating officer on the crash report, not a medical diagnosis. TxDOT reports crashes across categories — fatal, suspected serious injury, suspected minor injury, possible injury, non-injury and unknown — and those reflect an assessment made at the scene, sometimes before anyone has been examined. That is worth knowing when reading any crash statistic: the severity classification tells you what the officer recorded, and injuries that present later are not reclassified.

Because TxDOT states plainly that a crash may have no contributing factor recorded, or several. A single collision can be coded with speed, inattention and failure to yield simultaneously, so each of those rows counts it. Adding the rows therefore double-counts crashes and produces a number larger than the true total. This is exactly the sort of caveat that gets stripped away when statistics are repeated, which is why we publish it alongside the table rather than in a footnote.

The honest answer is that the data does not support a single ranking of the kind people expect, for the reason above — factors overlap and are not exclusive. What the 2024 statewide data does show is that failure-to-yield situations are collectively very large, with the left turn alone recorded in 35,984 crashes, ahead of stop sign at 31,693 and private drive at 19,156. That is a meaningful pattern about intersections and turning movements, and it is different from a claim that any one factor is "the leading cause".

More than the medical bills, and in categories that are easy to overlook. There is treatment, which continues after the acute phase; lost income during recovery and sometimes a permanent reduction in earning capacity; vehicle repair or replacement, plus transport while it is unavailable; and the household services an injured person can no longer perform. National cost-per-crash estimates exist but vary by methodology and year, so we do not reproduce one here — the meaningful figure is the one documented in your own records.

Because it would be misleading and, in Texas, potentially improper. Outcomes depend on liability, the medical evidence, whether treatment has concluded, documented lost income, the permanence of the injury, the insurance actually available on the other side, and the claimant's own share of responsibility under § 33.001 — which reduces recovery point for point and bars it entirely above 50 percent. Two people with similar injuries and different available coverage have very different outcomes. Any firm quoting an average before reading your records is quoting a marketing number.

Annually, and with a lag. TxDOT publishes finalised annual figures the following year — the 2024 tables used here note that the data were processed through 9 April 2025. That lag is normal and is the reason the most recent complete year available is usually one or two behind the current one. Anyone presenting current-year crash totals as final should be treated with caution, because the data underlying them is still being compiled.

Sparingly, and for context rather than for value. Aggregate data tells you about patterns across a state or a county — which situations produce the most collisions, how severity is distributed. It tells you nothing about liability in your collision or about what your claim is worth, both of which turn on evidence specific to you. The useful role of a page like this is to show where the numbers come from and what they do and do not support, which is also why every figure here is linked to its source.

Principally scale. It is the most populous county in Texas with an extensive freeway network carrying both commuter and freight traffic, so the absolute totals are large. A raw count is not a rate, and comparing counties by total crashes without accounting for population, vehicle miles travelled and road mileage produces conclusions the data does not support. The Harris County figures on this page are presented as what they are — counts for a single year from a single published source.

Follow the links beneath the tables. Both are PDFs published by TxDOT, and the Harris County row appears in the county table while the contributing-factor rows appear in the statewide section of the other. We would encourage the check, because the general point on this page is that a statistic without a traceable source is not evidence — and that applies to figures published by law firms at least as much as to anyone else.