Texas' Deadliest Vehicle Is a Pickup, and Most of Its Victims Were Never Inside It

The Chevrolet Silverado is tied to more road deaths in Texas than any other model, with 351 lives lost in 2024, according to a new analysis of federal crash data by The Martin Law Firm.

The vehicle most often tied to deadly crashes on Texas roads is not a sports car, a motorbike or an 18-wheeler. It is the Chevrolet Silverado, one of the most familiar pickups in the state.

Of the 4,160 people killed on Texas roads in 2024, 351 died in crashes that involved a Silverado. That is 86 more than the Ford F-150 in second place, and more than two and a half times the toll of the Toyota Camry, the highest-ranked passenger car on the list at 135 deaths.

The Martin Law Firm reached these figures by going through every one of the 3,774 fatal crashes in the state that year, using records from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and sorting each by the make and model of the vehicles involved. The result is a clear picture of which vehicles turn up most often when lives are lost on Texas roads.

Pickups Hold the Top Three Spots

Trucks lead the table from the top down. The Silverado, F-150 and Ram 1500 take the first three places, and pickups fill five of the top ten. Together, the top three are linked to 795 deaths, with crashes involving more than one of them counted only once. That is close to one in every five lives lost on Texas roads in 2024.

The Silverado alone was involved in 316 fatal crashes, well ahead of the F-150 at 244 and the Ram 1500 at 186. Further down, the GMC Sierra (120 deaths) and the heavy-duty Ford F-250 (107) round out the pickups in the top ten, with the Chevrolet Tahoe, a truck-based full-size SUV, close behind at 98.

Only three passenger cars make the cut: the Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla and Honda Accord. The one commercial truck on the list, the Freightliner Cascadia semi, sits fifth with 124 deaths.

Two drivers can pull up to the same red light in Texas, one in a family sedan and one in a full-size pickup, and pose very different risks to the people around them.

Most Victims Were Never Inside the Truck

The people who die in these crashes are mostly not the ones riding in the pickup. Of the 351 deaths tied to the Silverado, 202 were people in other vehicles, on foot or on bikes. Fifty-two of them were pedestrians.

The same pattern runs through every truck on the list. Some 68.2% of deaths linked to the F-250 were people outside the vehicle, as were 65.8% for the GMC Sierra, 61.8% for the Ram 1500 and 57% for the F-150. The three cars in the top ten tell a different story, with that share falling to between 39.8% for the Accord and 52.6% for the Camry. The Corolla sits at 42%.

The Freightliner Cascadia has the highest share of all, at 83.9%. For a semi that far outweighs the cars around it, that is no surprise, but it shows how much vehicle size shapes who pays the price when a crash turns deadly.

Pedestrians Pay a Heavy Price

Those on foot carry much of the weight. Pickups were involved in crashes that killed 206 of the 763 pedestrians who died on Texas roads in 2024, more than one in four.

This fits with research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which found that pickups, SUVs and vans with hoods over 40 inches tall are about 45% more likely to kill a pedestrian than lower cars with sloped fronts. A tall, blunt front end is more likely to strike a person in the chest or head than in the legs, and a small child can be hard to see at all from the driver’s seat.

Most drivers think of crash risk as something faced by the people inside the car. This data shows the heaviest toll often lands on those around it.

Texas Drives Bigger, and Pays for It

Texas stands apart from the rest of the nation. The Silverado makes up 5.25% of vehicles in fatal crashes in the state, more than one and a half times its 3.36% share nationwide. Across all pickups, the gap holds: they account for 21.4% of vehicles in fatal Texas crashes, against 16.0% across the US.

Nine of the ten models on the list show up in Texas crashes at the same rate or higher than they do nationally. The Chevrolet Tahoe has the widest gap at 1.69 times its national share, followed by the Ford F-250 at 1.60 and the Silverado at 1.56. The Honda Accord is the only model below the national rate, at 0.82.

A Streak That Has Lasted Since 2000

Texas has not gone a full day without a road death since November 7, 2000. TxDOT has made that streak the focus of its “End the Streak” campaign, which centres on how people drive.

This data points to a second factor that gets less notice. With so many of the state’s deadliest crashes tied to its largest vehicles, what Texans drive now matters as much for road safety as how they drive it. Truck owners, fleet operators and city planners would do well to weigh that, from the vehicles they choose to the way streets and crossings are built around them.

Notes to Editors

Figures come from the NHTSA 2024 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), covering all fatal crashes in Texas in 2024 (3,774 crashes, 4,160 deaths). TxDOT’s own records show a slightly different total of 4,150 deaths.

“Deaths” counts everyone who died in a crash involving at least one vehicle of that model, with each crash counted once per model. The 795 total for the top three pickups is deduplicated, so a crash involving two of those models is counted once.

“Deaths outside the vehicle” is the share of those deaths among people not riding in that model, including occupants of other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. “Texas vs US” compares each model’s share of vehicles in fatal crashes in Texas with its share nationally. The Ram 1500 figure includes older trucks sold under the Dodge Ram name.

Models were identified by VIN. Involvement in a crash does not mean the vehicle or its driver was at fault. Rankings reflect crash involvement, not a rate per registered vehicle, and so partly reflect how common each model is on Texas roads.

Source: The Martin Law Firm