By Headlines Team 
A crash that involves bad tires is more than twice as likely to kill on Texas roads as the average wreck, according to a new analysis of state crash data by The Martin Law Firm, and the risk climbs highest on the long rural highways that carry so much of the state’s holiday traffic.
Texas roads saw 554,146 crashes in 2024. In 3,975 of them, the officer at the scene listed defective or slick tires as a factor, and 62 of those crashes ended in at least one death. That gives tire-related crashes a fatal rate of 1.56%, more than double the 0.68% rate across all Texas crashes, based on Texas Department of Transportation records sorted by the factor police noted for each crash.
Where the Tire Fails Matters as Much as Why
Two drivers can set out on the same day, in the same kind of car, and face very different odds depending on the state of the tread beneath them and the road ahead of them. On city streets, a tire-related crash turned fatal 0.74% of the time, only a touch above the statewide average for all crashes. Out on rural roads the picture changes sharply, as the fatal rate for tire-related crashes rose to 2.31%, more than three times the rate seen in cities and well above the 1.21% rate for all rural crashes.
Rural roads carry most of the weight in the data. They saw 27.3% of all Texas crashes in 2024, yet they accounted for 52.3% of tire-related crashes and 77.4% of the fatal ones, with 48 of the state’s 62 fatal tire crashes taking place on rural roads.
| Crash Type | Fatal Rate | Fatal Crashes | Total Crashes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rural tire-related crashes | 2.31% | 48 | 2,078 |
| All tire-related crashes | 1.56% | 62 | 3,975 |
| All rural crashes | 1.21% | 1,831 | 151,432 |
| Urban tire-related crashes | 0.74% | 14 | 1,897 |
| All Texas crashes | 0.68% | 3,762 | 554,146 |
| All urban crashes | 0.48% | 1,931 | 402,714 |
The pattern holds for serious harm as well as deaths. Across the state, 5.43% of tire-related crashes ended in a death or a suspected serious injury, compared with 3.37% of all crashes on Texas roads.
Heat, Age and the Long Drive Home
The problem isn’t limited to Texas. Nationally, NHTSA counted 511 deaths in tire-related crashes in 2024, and the agency warns that sustained heat can cause tires to break down and lead to blowouts and tread separation, with tire aging a bigger concern across the southern Sun Belt, which includes Texas. In 2024, a tire-related crash happened on Texas roads nearly 11 times a day.
The timing matters with the holidays close. Last year’s 102-hour Thanksgiving travel period saw 35 fatal crashes and 39 deaths on Texas roads, as families made long drives across the state. Most drivers check their fuel and plan their route before a long trip, but far fewer think to check their tread depth or the age of their tires, even though the data shows tires matter most on the open rural stretches where a crash is most likely to turn deadly.
A Five-Year Problem That Hasn’t Gone Away
Looking back over five years, from 2020 to 2024, defective or slick tires played a part in 20,326 Texas crashes and 366 fatal ones. Fatal tire crashes fell 27% over that period, which is real progress, but suspected serious injury crashes rose from 139 to 154, so bad tires are still turning ordinary trips into far more dangerous ones.
The true scale may be larger still. The factor police record covers both defective and worn tires, not just blowouts, and because it relies on what officers note at the scene, police-reported figures may undercount how often tires play a part. TxDOT also does not publish tire-related crashes by county, city or month, so the analysis covers statewide, rural and urban figures only.
About the Data
Tire-related crashes are those where the investigating officer listed “Defective or Slick Tires” as a contributing factor in TxDOT’s annual Crash Contributing Factors tables for 2020 to 2024, and a single crash can have more than one factor. All-crash baselines come from TxDOT’s 2024 Rural and Urban Crashes and Injuries by Severity table, with fatal rates found by dividing fatal crashes by total crashes in each group. The serious harm share counts fatal and suspected serious injury crashes as a share of all crashes, and crashes per day use 366 days for 2024. Holiday figures come from TxDOT’s 2024 holiday periods table, covering 6:00 PM on November 27 to December 1, 2024, and national figures and heat guidance come from NHTSA.
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