What's shown
Traffic deaths and serious injuries on surface streets in the City of Houston, 2016 to 2025 and part of 2026, from TxDOT's public crash records (CRIS). The map covers the City's full-purpose area. Limited-purpose annexation areas are not included.
Which roads
Roads included sets which roads every number covers: Streets (city streets, including state-owned arterials; the default), +Frontage (adds freeway frontage roads), or +Freeways (adds freeway and toll-road main lanes and ramps). Frontage roads are TxDOT-owned streets with driveways, bus stops and people walking; crashes police record on a frontage road are counted there. It keeps major streets whoever owns them, including state roads such as S Main (US-90A), SH 6 and Westheimer (FM 1093). Austin's Vision Zero dashboard and the City's High Injury Network do the same.
With +Freeways, crashes on freeway and toll-road main lanes and ramps are added. They are added to every total and chart. On the map each freeway is split into sections between ramps, one per direction, and each ramp is its own piece; a crash is placed at the milepost on its crash report (TxDOT DFO on its highway) and on the section going its direction; without a milepost, on the section of its own highway within 250 ft, else the nearest one. Ramps between two freeways count together as one interchange; other ramps count together by exit. Toll roads are run by the county toll authority, so they count only under Road owner: All. Crashes in parking lots and on private property are never included.
Road ownership
Each street and crash is labeled city-owned or TxDOT-owned, using TxDOT's roadway inventory. A street counts as TxDOT-owned only where it runs along a state road. A city street that crosses over a freeway stays city-owned.
How crashes map to streets
A crash inside an intersection counts for that intersection. Each intersection covers the area where its streets cross, reaching 75 ft down each local street or collector and 125 ft down each arterial or frontage road, stopping halfway when the next intersection is closer. This follows the method Vision Zero Austin uses. The distances come from Houston crash reports: police stop recording crashes as intersection crashes about 50 to 75 ft from the crossing, and arterial crossings are wider. On the map, at city-wide zoom only the top fifth of intersections by count in the current view are drawn, so streets stay readable; zoomed out they are dots, and from zoom 15 each intersection is drawn as its area and each block as a band that stops at the intersections' edges.
Every other crash is assigned to its nearest block within 200 ft (median 4 ft). The street table counts these crashes between intersections; a whole street, when selected, also includes the intersections along it.
Definitions
Killed or seriously injured = the K and A levels on the KABCO injury scale. Counts are of people: a crash that kills two people counts as two. Travel mode, age and sex describe each person, so "walking" means people who were walking. With All crashes selected, counts are of crashes.
Years of life lost = years before age 75, added up for everyone killed (the CDC method), using each person's age from the crash report.
Age and sex = from the crash report for each person killed or seriously injured. As a filter, they keep crashes where at least one person in that group was killed or seriously injured.
Lighting = the light condition the officer recorded. Dawn or dusk is twilight, just before sunrise or just after sunset. Dark, with street lights means it was dark and the road was lit by street lights. Dark, no street lights means it was dark and unlit. A few dark crashes have no lighting recorded; they count under Dark (all).
Contributing factors = factors the officer recorded for any driver or vehicle in the crash. Speeding includes unsafe speed, speeding over the limit and failing to control speed. Failed to yield covers all right-of-way violations by a driver. Alcohol or drugs includes had been drinking and under the influence. Distracted includes inattention and phone use.
Rate by neighborhood income = people killed or seriously injured in crashes in the block groups at each income level, divided by the people who live in those block groups, per 100,000 residents per year. Population is from the 2023 American Community Survey. Block groups that cross the city line count only the share of residents inside it, by land area.
Neighborhood income = median household income of the Census block group where the crash happened.
Counts, not rates
Streets are ranked and shaded by the number of people killed or seriously injured. The City's High Injury Network is built the same way. The counts are not adjusted for traffic volume, because most local streets have no traffic counts. On busier streets that do have counts, the results are about the same after adjusting for traffic.
Crash costs
Each person hurt in a crash is given the FHWA per-person cost for their injury level (FHWA-SA-25-021, 2024 dollars). Economic cost covers medical care, lost work, property damage, and emergency, legal and insurance costs. Victims, insurers, employers and government all pay part of it.
The comprehensive cost also puts a dollar value on lost quality and length of life. It overlaps with years of life lost, so the two should not be added together.
A crash that hurts several people counts each person. Injuries with no recorded severity have no cost, and some crashes are never reported, so these figures are a minimum. Costs are national averages.
Data sources
All data is public.
Crashes: TxDOT Crash Records Information System (CRIS), public extracts, 2016–2025 plus partial 2026. txdot.gov, cris.txdot.gov
Street network & sidewalks: OpenStreetMap. openstreetmap.org
Road ownership (city vs TxDOT): TxDOT Roadway Inventory. TxDOT Open Data Portal
Street design (speed, lanes, width, median) & traffic volume: City of Houston Public Works. COH GIS Open Data
High Injury Network overlay: City of Houston Vision Zero, official 2022 HIN. houstontx.gov/visionzero
Neighborhood income: U.S. Census American Community Survey, 2023 5-year estimates (block group). census.gov/acs
Crash costs: FHWA, Updated Crash Costs for Highway Safety Analysis (FHWA-SA-25-021), KABCO per-person costs in 2024 dollars. highways.dot.gov
City boundary, council districts, super neighborhoods, TIRZs, management districts, HPD patrol divisions, ZIP codes: City of Houston GIS. COH GIS Open Data
Schools: Texas Education Agency school directory (public district and charter campuses), via City of Houston GIS. Parks: City of Houston Parks and Recreation, via City of Houston GIS.
Census tracts: U.S. Census Bureau TIGERweb (2020 tracts). tigerweb.geo.census.gov
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Layer names, dates and methods are listed in the project CODEBOOK on GitHub.