Houston's most dangerous intersections: what the published rankings show

The ranking below counts crashes of all severities within 275 feet of each intersection from March 2021 to February 2022. It covers non-freeway intersections in Harris County and was published by the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering in March 2022.¹

Pease Street at Fannin Street had 59 crashes in the 12 months, far more than any other intersection on the list. The other nine had between 36 and 41. Three of the ten are on Highway 6, at Spencer Road, Bellaire Boulevard and Westheimer Road.¹

How the University of Houston ranked intersections

The study pulled crash records from the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) Crash Records Information System (CRIS) public query tool. It counted every crash within 275 feet of an intersection’s center and left out freeway interchanges.^1,2 The study’s title describes the 12 months as the post-lockdown phase of the pandemic.

The ranking counts crashes, not deaths or injuries, and does not adjust for traffic volume. A busy intersection with many minor crashes can rank above a quieter one where crashes are more often fatal. The list covers all of Harris County, not only the City of Houston.

A 2025 ranking published by a law firm

A law firm, Angel Reyes & Associates, published a statewide ranking of intersections by 2025 crash count as marketing content. Its top 50 includes 12 Houston intersections, led by Bissonnet Street at West Sam Houston Parkway South at No. 7 with 44 crashes.³ The firm says it filtered a TxDOT CRIS public extract for 2025 to crashes flagged as at an intersection.

Treat this list with caution. The firm states that Texas had 617,930 crashes in 2025, about 15% more than the 538,860 reportable crashes in TxDOT’s annual tables.^3,4 Its extract probably includes crashes below the reportable threshold, and Texas Mobility Outlook has not reproduced the analysis. The list also pairs Bissonnet Street with Sam Houston Parkway twice, under two different street names (No. 7 and No. 19). Texas Mobility Outlook could not tell from the article whether these are separate locations.

Intersections that appear on more than one list

Pease and Fannin is the only intersection on both the University of Houston list and the 2025 law-firm list.^1,3 No Sam Houston Parkway location appears on the university list, which excluded freeway interchanges.

Bissonnet Street at Sam Houston Parkway also tops two older lists published by law firms as marketing content. One, from 2018, gives no data years.⁵ The other says it used TxDOT data from 2012 to 2015.⁶ Neither documents its method well enough to check, so Texas Mobility Outlook does not reproduce their counts.

What official data say about intersections

In the documents it reviewed, Texas Mobility Outlook found no ranked list of named intersections from TxDOT, the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), the City of Houston or Harris County. Official sources describe where severe crashes concentrate instead:

• City of Houston. Its 2020 Vision Zero Action Plan found that 43% of traffic deaths and serious injuries from 2014 to 2018 occurred at or related to an intersection or driveway.⁷ The City says 6% of its streets account for 60% of its traffic deaths and serious injuries.⁸
• Harris County and the City. Their joint high injury network maps half-mile street segments with at least 3.5 fatal or serious-injury crashes per mile from 2014 to 2018. It excludes interstates, U.S. and state highways, toll roads and other limited-access roads.⁹
• H-GAC. In the eight-county region from 2018 to 2024, 9,625 of 26,434 crashes that killed or seriously injured someone, or 36%, happened at intersections. Another 1,476 (6%) were at driveways.¹⁰

In a March 2022 update on its intersection safety assessments, H-GAC reported that intersections account for about 40% of all crashes in the region, more than 25% of fatal crashes and about 38% of serious-injury crashes.¹¹ The update set the selection rules for the assessments: at least one fatal or serious-injury crash in the last three years and more than one such crash per million entering vehicles, with the top 10 chosen in each county. It did not name the intersections.

Signals and people on foot

A Rice University Kinder Institute analysis of Houston crashes from 2010 to 2016 found that fatal crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists were more than nine times as likely as chance to occur at signal-controlled intersections.¹² It did not publish a ranked list in the release reviewed by Texas Mobility Outlook. Pedestrian deaths are covered on Houston pedestrian crash statistics.

Intersection deaths across Texas

TxDOT counted 955 intersection-related deaths statewide in 2025, about a quarter of all Texas traffic deaths. The count fell from 1,121 in 2023 and 1,050 in 2024.^13,14,15

Factors tied to intersections appear often in TxDOT’s 2025 contributing-factor table. Failing to yield while turning left was reported in 35,194 crashes, 152 of them fatal. Failing to yield at a stop sign appeared in 30,913 crashes and disregarding a traffic signal in 19,464.¹⁶ The full statewide picture is on Texas traffic fatalities.

What the rankings cannot tell you

• Severity. Both current rankings sort by total crash count. An intersection with frequent fender-benders can outrank one with fewer but deadlier crashes.
• Exposure. Neither divides crashes by the number of vehicles entering the intersection, the measure H-GAC used in its own assessments.
• Time. The University of Houston list covers one year ending in February 2022, and the law-firm list covers 2025. Crash counts at a single location can swing from year to year.
• Freeways. The university study excluded freeway interchanges. For freeway rankings, see Houston’s most dangerous highways.