Is Houston on track for zero traffic deaths by 2030? Ten years of data

The City of Houston committed in August 2019 to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on its streets by 2030.¹ Six years on, the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) crash tables show more people dying inside the city every year since then than in any year from 2015 to 2018.

This note uses TxDOT’s annual Crashes and Injuries, Cities and Towns table, row HOUSTON, for 2015 through 2025. The table counts people killed and seriously injured in crashes inside city limits on every type of road, including interstates and toll roads. Year-over-year changes, averages and the pace toward the goal are Texas Mobility Outlook’s calculations from that table. County road-type figures and state totals come from TxDOT’s companion tables.

Houston traffic deaths and serious injuries by year

Deaths ranged from 201 in 2018 to 339 in 2024. The 2025 count, 293, was 46 lower than in 2024, a 13.6% drop, but 88 higher than in 2015, a 42.9% rise.^2,3

The series shifts around 2019. From 2015 to 2018, deaths averaged about 225 a year. From 2019 to 2025 they averaged about 298, and no year fell below 254. The highest count before 2019 was 249, in 2016.

Serious injuries moved less. They peaked at 1,606 in 2023 and fell 3.6% to 1,465 in 2025, which was still 10.6% above 2015 and above every year from 2015 through 2018.^2,3 TxDOT has counted only incapacitating injuries as serious since 2010, so the definition is the same across the whole period.⁴

The pace the 2030 goal would require

Executive Order 1-60 commits the City to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on Houston streets by 2030.¹ Measured from TxDOT’s 2025 count, a steady path to zero in 2030 would take about 59 fewer deaths each year for five years (293 divided by 5).

The largest one-year drop in TxDOT’s 2015-2025 table was 46, from 2024 to 2025. The next largest was 43, from 2017 to 2018, and deaths rose by 53 the following year. No year in the table matched the pace the goal now implies.

Serious injuries face the same arithmetic. Reaching zero in 2030 would take 293 fewer each year (1,465 divided by 5). The largest one-year drop in the table was 96, from 2017 to 2018.

The goal’s own starting point was lower than any recent year. The executive order cited TxDOT data for 2014 to 2018: 1,097 fatal crashes and 5,556 serious injury crashes in Houston, which it described as an average of 219 people killed and 1,111 seriously injured each year.¹ Those averages divide crash counts, not people, by five. The City’s 2020 Vision Zero Action Plan counted 1,153 people killed over the same five years, or about 231 a year.⁵ TxDOT’s 2025 count of 293 is above both.

This note measures the record against the goal as written in 2019. It does not assess whether the goal is still City policy. The City’s last Vision Zero annual report covers 2022, and the Houston Chronicle reported in February 2025 that Mayor John Whitmire had said a year earlier that a goal for the future was not what the city needed.^6,7 Vision Zero in Houston covers what the City, Harris County and H-GAC have committed to and reported.

Where deaths happen: interstates and city streets

TxDOT publishes deaths by road type for counties, not cities. Harris County’s table shows a shift over the decade. Deaths on interstates rose from 85 in 2015 to 134 in 2025, and deaths on city streets from 114 to 198. Deaths on U.S. and state highways fell from 84 to 58.^8,9

Interstates and city streets together accounted for 51% of Harris County traffic deaths in 2015 and 66% in 2025. City street deaths peaked at 236 in 2024. The county table covers roads inside and outside Houston, so it is not a city series. Harris County crash statistics has the full county figures.

For the city itself, the closest recent split comes from a news analysis. Axios Houston reported that of 280 fatal crashes in Houston in 2025, 154 occurred on city-operated streets, 90 on interstates and 36 on other state highways, tollways and farm-to-market roads.¹⁰ That is 55% on city streets and 32% on interstates (computed). The City’s 2020 action plan found that 51% of traffic deaths and serious injuries from 2014 to 2018 occurred on city-owned streets.⁵

The split matters for the goal. The high-injury network that the City and Harris County mapped from 2014-2018 crash data leaves out interstates, U.S. and state highways and toll roads.¹¹ By the Axios count, 90 of Houston’s 280 fatal crashes in 2025 (32%) were on interstates, which the network excludes, and up to 126 (45%) were on interstates, state highways, tollways or farm-to-market roads.

Who is killed has shifted too. Pedestrians were 36% of the people killed in Houston in 2022, by the City’s count, up from 31% in 2018 (computed from the City’s figures of 64 of 206 in 2018 and 115 of 323 in 2022).^6,12 Houston pedestrian crash statistics has the later figures.

How Houston compares with Texas and other cities

From 2015 to 2025, traffic deaths rose 42.9% in Houston, 28.3% in Harris County and 5.1% statewide.^2,13,14 Houston’s share of Texas traffic deaths rose from 5.7% to 7.8%.

All three fell in 2025: 13.6% in Houston, 13.1% in Harris County and 9.4% statewide. The state’s 3,769 deaths came with 1.20 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, the lowest rate in TxDOT’s 2003-2025 comparison table.¹⁴ TxDOT does not publish vehicle miles for cities, so no comparable Houston rate exists in its tables. Texas traffic fatalities has the statewide series.

Among the five largest Texas cities, Houston recorded 293 of the 842 traffic deaths in 2025, or 34.8%; the city-by-city table is on City of Houston crash statistics. It had more deaths than San Antonio and Austin combined (265) and 1.7 times as many as Dallas (172).²

These are counts, not rates. Houston is the largest of the five cities, and a per-resident comparison needs population figures this note does not use. At the regional level, H-GAC’s safety plan materials give the eight-county region a fatal crash rate of 10.4 per 100,000 residents, against 14.1 for Texas and 12.2 for the United States.¹⁵ The executive order itself opened by noting that, among the 12 largest U.S. metro areas, Houston had the highest rate of roadway deaths per capita from 2001 through 2016.¹

Limits of this analysis

• Extract dates. TxDOT’s 2015-2024 city rows reflect crash reports processed as of April 9, 2025, and the 2025 row as of April 7, 2026. Totals can change in later editions: TxDOT’s statewide count for 2024 moved from 4,150 to 4,159 between editions.^14,16
• Other counts differ. City reports and news analyses give different totals for the same years. For 2024, TxDOT’s table gives 339, the Houston Chronicle reported at least 345 and Axios Houston 317.^7,17 City of Houston crash statistics compares the counts.
• Counts, not rates. Without city traffic volumes or population in TxDOT’s tables, this note compares counts. A larger or busier city will record more deaths at the same level of risk.
• No causes. The analysis describes changes. It does not attribute them to street design, enforcement, travel patterns after 2020 or any policy.
• Mixed vintages in the index chart. The Texas line uses the revised 2024 total (4,159); the Houston and Harris County 2024 values come from the April 2025 edition.