Texas Commercial Truck Crash Statistics

Texas police reported 38,533 crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle in 2025. Those crashes killed 528 people and left 1,611 with suspected serious injuries¹. The 528 deaths were 14 percent of the 3,769 traffic deaths TxDOT recorded statewide that year¹¹⁴. The figures come from the state’s crash records system, and they count crashes in which the investigating officer marked a commercial motor vehicle as involved. That is a different measure from the federal “large truck” counts, and the difference matters for any comparison.

The sources

TxDOT Crash Records Information System (CRIS). TxDOT collects the crash reports Texas officers file and keeps a statewide database of reportable crashes. It says each year’s summary reports are published by June of the following year⁷. One of those reports breaks out commercial motor vehicle crashes by county and severity¹. The public CRIS Query tool lets anyone filter and export publicly available crash data⁷⁸. TxDOT keeps crash records for the previous 10 full calendar years plus the current year¹⁶.

NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The national census of fatal crashes. NHTSA’s annual large-truck fact sheet carries a state table built from it⁹.

FMCSA Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). Crash reports on trucks and buses that states send to FMCSA, published through Analysis & Information (A&I) Online. A&I treats MCMIS crash data as preliminary for 22 months¹⁰.

The differences among the three are covered in the field guide to U.S. crash data.

Statewide, by year

Sources: TxDOT, Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Involved Crashes and Injuries by County, 2020 to 2025¹²³⁴⁵⁶. Deaths are all people killed in those crashes, not only truck occupants. Serious injuries are people, not crashes.

The total includes crashes of every severity. In 2025, 27,587 of the 38,533 crashes were coded as non-injury crashes¹.

Counties with the most CMV crashes

Source: TxDOT, CMV Involved Crashes and Injuries by County, 2025¹.

These ten counties accounted for 19,169 of the state’s 38,533 CMV crashes in 2025, about half. Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant ranked first through fourth, in that order, in every year from 2020 to 2025¹²³⁴⁵⁶. These are raw counts, not rates per mile traveled or per truck registered.

By road class

Template for a CRIS Query pull of CMV-involved crashes by road class, for the most recent complete year. The rows follow the road classes in TxDOT’s public CRIS extract specification¹⁷, leaving out toll bridges and non-trafficway locations.

By time of day

Template for the same pull, grouped by the crash time on the CR-3.

For the factors police record in truck crashes nationally, and what those codes can and cannot show, see leading causes of large truck crashes.

One state, three death counts

The three systems give different answers for the same state and year.

Sources: TxDOT 2024 CMV report²; NHTSA, Large Trucks: 2024 Data, Table 7⁹; FMCSA A&I¹⁰.

None of these numbers is wrong. They define the vehicle differently, as the next section shows. The FARS figure for 2024 comes from NHTSA’s Annual Report File and can change when the Final File is released⁹.

Methods

What Texas counts as a commercial motor vehicle crash

TxDOT defines a commercial motor vehicle crash as one the investigating officer identified as involving a CMV by selecting the “CMV” indicator on the CR-3¹³. The police instruction manual tells officers to select it when the crash involved or was related to a commercial motor vehicle or other large vehicle, and defines a CMV as one ordinarily used in interstate or intrastate commerce that weighs 10,000 pounds or more, carries hazardous material, or has a capacity of nine or more people. It is required for buses, school buses and truck tractors¹². The CMV section’s weight identifier is a gross vehicle weight rating or registered gross weight of 10,001 pounds or more, for a single vehicle or a combination¹².

NHTSA’s FARS-based large-truck tables count any medium or heavy truck with a gross vehicle weight rating over 10,000 pounds, excluding buses and motor homes, whether used commercially or not⁹. FMCSA’s A&I counts commercial trucks over 10,000 pounds, any vehicle designed to carry nine or more people, and any vehicle displaying a hazardous materials placard¹¹. So the TxDOT count includes buses and FARS does not, while FARS includes heavy trucks not used in commerce. The federal definitions are in the reader’s map to the FMCSRs.

What counts as a reportable crash

TxDOT defines a reportable crash as one involving a motor vehicle in transport, on or originating on a trafficway, that results in injury or death or apparent damage of $1,000 to any one person’s property¹³. TxDOT’s police manual cites Texas Transportation Code § 550.062 for the rule that an officer who investigates a crash with injury or death must send the report to TxDOT within 10 days, and tells officers to submit any investigated crash with $1,000 or more in damage to one person’s property as well¹². A fatality is a death within 30 days of the crash¹³.

Serious injuries

A suspected serious injury, called an incapacitating injury before the 2010 reports, is any nonfatal injury that keeps the person from walking, driving or normally continuing the activities they could do before the crash¹³. It is recorded by the officer on the crash report, not by a physician.

Known limits

• Officer coding. Whether a crash counts as a CMV crash depends on the box the officer checks. A qualifying vehicle the officer does not flag is not counted.
• Counts change. Each report states the date its data were processed. Statewide traffic deaths for 2024 were reported as 4,150 in TxDOT’s 2024 summary and as 4,159 a year later¹⁵¹⁴. The CMV figures here can move the same way.
• Unreported crashes. CRIS is built from officers’ reports. Crashes no officer investigated, and private-property crashes an agency chooses not to submit, are not in it⁷¹².
• Counts, not rates. TxDOT’s CMV report gives no truck mileage by county, so these tables cannot say where trucks are more dangerous per mile.
• Form changes. TxDOT has used several versions of the CR-3 within its 10-year retention window¹⁶. Compare fields across years with care.

How to cite this page: BTT Road & Legal, “Texas Commercial Truck Crash Statistics,” October 7, 2026, https://bttlaw.com/research/texas-commercial-truck-crash-statistics/. For any figure, cite the TxDOT, NHTSA or FMCSA document listed in the sources.