Dallas-Fort Worth's deadliest highways and corridors

If you drive in Dallas-Fort Worth, you're driving in one of the more dangerous stretches of pavement in Texas. Dallas County recorded 305 fatal crashes and 331 deaths in 2024, and Tarrant County logged 189 fatal crashes and 201 deaths, according to the Texas Department of Transportation's county-by-county crash tally.¹ Statewide, TxDOT counted 4,150 traffic deaths that year, down from 4,291 in 2023, so the two counties alone account for a real chunk of the state's total.²

Some of that risk is spread evenly across the region. A lot of it isn't. Specific interchanges, specific frontage roads, and specific stretches of freeway keep showing up in the same crash investigations year after year.

The interstates

Interstate 35E held the title of Dallas's deadliest roadway in 2025, with 14 fatal crashes recorded on it.³ Across the Trinity River in Fort Worth, Interstate 35W carries its own history, most notoriously from the morning of February 11, 2021, when ice on the roadway near 28th Street and Northside Drive triggered a 133-vehicle pileup that killed at least six people.⁴ Reporting on the crash pointed to more than weather: Texas 121 dead-ends into I-35W about two miles south of the site, drivers have to cross several lanes in under a mile to reach the I-30 exit, and a TEXPress toll lane rejoins the free lanes on the left, forcing fast-lane traffic to brake and swerve. The posted speed there is 75 mph, with no shoulder to pull onto if something goes wrong.⁴

Wrong-way crashes on the region's freeways are common enough that the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) built a dedicated countermeasures program around them. The first phase targeted ramps along US-75 in Dallas, Collin, and Denton counties, with finished work in Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Garland, Grand Prairie, Irving, Mesquite, Richardson, and Rowlett. The second phase moved into Tarrant County, covering seven priority freeway corridors and 54.2 miles of roadway.⁵

Loop 12: Dallas's most-investigated street

Before I-35E took the title, Dallas's deadliest road for several years running was Loop 12, the beltway that wraps the southern half of the city. An NBC 5 Investigates series called "Driven to Death" tallied 105 deadly crashes on the loop in under five years, plus at least 479 serious-injury crashes.⁶ One segment saw five pedestrians killed in an 11-month span. In September 2024, a student was killed crossing near East Ledbetter Drive, and residents flagged a bus stop near Bonnie View Road as a particular hazard.⁶

The scrutiny appears to have worked. After the city added signals and marked crosswalks at 16 locations along the corridor and stepped up speed enforcement, fatal crashes on Loop 12 fell from 25 in 2024 to roughly 12 in 2025, a 52% drop, with only three deaths recorded there through most of the year. Citywide, fatal crashes fell 19% over the same stretch.³

Where Dallas's crashes cluster now

Dallas has mapped this concentration formally. City planners found that about 8% of city streets account for roughly 60% of the fatal and severe-injury crashes, the basis of Dallas's Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic deaths and cut severe injuries in half by 2030.⁷ Working from that high-injury network data, the Dallas Observer ranked Buckner Boulevard as the single worst corridor by injury count, with separate dangerous segments between Lake June Road and Great Trinity Forest Way, between Interstate 30 and Forney Road, and between Scyene Road and Forney Road. Northwest Highway between Walton Walker Boulevard and Timberline Drive, Storey Road near the Irving city line, Second Avenue between Elsie Faye Heggins Street and US-175, and Corinth Street between East 8th Street and Stella Avenue round out the list.⁸

The city backed an $8 million bond package for Vision Zero work in its 2024 cycle and won a $21.8 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant in January 2025 to keep the work going.⁸

Fort Worth's turn

Fort Worth came to this later than Dallas. The city committed to Vision Zero back in 2019 but didn't finish a formal action plan for years, and in the meantime fatal crashes rose 31% and serious-injury crashes rose 22% over a five-year stretch.⁹ The city council finally approved its Vision Zero Safety Action Plan in 2025, targeting zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2050.¹⁰

Working from crash data collected between 2019 and 2023, the plan found that pedestrians and cyclists make up only 4% of Fort Worth's crashes but 34% of the people killed or seriously injured, and that neighborhoods with high or medium-high social vulnerability account for more than 60% of both total and severe crashes.¹⁰ Ten corridors made the plan's priority list for near-term redesigns:

• Ellis Avenue, from NW 21st Street to NW 28th Street
• Sharondale Street, from 6th Avenue to James Avenue
• NW 14th Street, from N Main Street to Gould Avenue
• S Beach Street, from Avenue H to Mitchell Boulevard
• Evans Avenue, from E Morningside Drive to E Berry Street
• NW 26th Street, from N Main Street/Stockyards Boulevard to Angle/Refugio Avenue
• Pennsylvania Avenue, from S Main Street to 8th Avenue
• W Seminary Drive, from 6th Avenue to Rector Avenue
• Mark IV Parkway, from Meacham Boulevard to the southbound freeway crossover ramp
• Sycamore School Road, from the Southern Freeway to W Everman Parkway¹⁰

The suburbs aren't exempt

McKinney's US-75/Central Expressway interchange with University Drive (US-380) has produced enough serious wrecks that it keeps turning up in local news coverage, including a June 2022 crash nearby at Stonebridge Road where a pickup rear-ended a sedan stopped for a yellow light, killing two people.¹¹ Denton adopted its own Vision Zero plan in 2026, securing a $12.72 million federal grant and naming Hickory Street at Eagle Drive and Windsor Drive at Loop 288 as early priorities.¹²

The pattern holds across the region. NCTCOG's own numbers show pedestrian deaths across its 12-county area climbing 46% between 2010 and 2019, versus 5% for all other traffic deaths combined, a gap wide enough that the Federal Highway Administration named Texas a Pedestrian Focus State.¹³ The council has since backed road safety audits on Vickery Meadow and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Dallas, Belknap Street in Fort Worth, W. Spring Valley Road in Richardson, and Center and Cooper Streets in Arlington.¹³

If you're hurt on one of these roads

None of this makes any single crash inevitable. It does mean that drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians on Loop 12, I-35W, Buckner Boulevard, or the Fort Worth corridors above are dealing with roads that data has already flagged as trouble spots. If you're hurt in a crash on one of them, documentation matters: photos of the scene and the crash report number can matter later, and so can getting contact information from anyone who saw it happen. An attorney familiar with the local courts and these specific roads can help you sort out what your options are; you can find one through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This article provides general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Texas Department of Transportation, "Crashes and Injuries by County, 2024": https://www.txdot.gov/content/dam/docs/division/trf/crash-records/2024/13.pdf

2. Texas Department of Transportation, "Texas Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Facts, Calendar Year 2024": https://www.txdot.gov/content/dam/docs/division/trf/crash-records/2024/01.pdf

3. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, "Traffic deaths drop sharply on Loop 12, once Dallas' deadliest road": https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/traffic-deaths-drop-sharply-on-loop-12-once-dallas-deadliest-road/4012842/

4. Yahoo News, "Why is the spot of the deadly vehicle pileup on I-35W in Fort Worth so dangerous?": https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-spot-deadly-133-car-232557253.html

5. North Central Texas Council of Governments, "Wrong-Way Driving": https://www.nctcog.org/trans/quality/safety/transportation-safety/wrong-way-driving

6. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, "Driven to Death: Loop 12, Dallas' deadliest street": https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/driven-to-death-loop-12-dallas-deadliest-street/3968488/

7. City of Dallas, Vision Zero Action Plan Memorandum, January 28, 2022: https://dallascityhall.com/government/citymanager/Documents/FY%2021-22%20Memos/Vision_Zero_ActionPlan_Memo01282022.pdf

8. Dallas Observer, "10 Deadliest Roads in Dallas, Texas": https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/deadliest-roads-in-dallas-texas-20088043/

9. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, "Fort Worth fatal crashes up 31% in 5 years as city talks 'Vision Zero'": https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/fort-worth-fatal-crashes-up-31-in-5-years-as-city-talks-vision-zero/3455091/

10. City of Fort Worth, Vision Zero Safety Action Plan: https://www.fortworthtexas.gov/files/assets/public/v/1/vision-zero-safety-plan-action-plan.pdf

11. CBS News Texas, "US 380 at Stonebridge Road in McKinney shut down for fatality crash": https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/us-380-at-stonebridge-road-in-mckinney-shut-down-for-fatality-crash/

12. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, "Denton adopts Vision Zero plan to end traffic deaths by 2050": https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/denton-joins-dallas-fort-worth-in-effort-to-eliminate-traffic-deaths/4027384/

13. North Central Texas Council of Governments, Pedestrian Safety Action Plan: https://www.nctcog.org/trans/plan/lumo/bikeped/pedestrian-safety-action-plan