Texas

Texas has more interstate highway miles than any other US state, and its urban interstates collectively account for a disproportionate share of the country’s highway fatalities. Among Texas interstates, I-45 stands out. The 286-mile corridor connecting Dallas to Galveston passes directly through the heart of Houston, and the Houston metropolitan sections of I-45 have generated fatality counts that put them among the most dangerous urban highway stretches in the nation.

The stretch of US Highway 285 running through southeastern New Mexico and into West Texas is called the Death Highway. It is not a marketing name or a dramatic exaggeration by journalists — it is what the people who live along the route, the emergency responders who work it, and the drivers who haul freight on it call it. The name reflects a statistical reality: this corridor has produced a per-mile fatality rate that places it among the most dangerous rural highways in the United States, and the primary reason is the Permian Basin oil boom.

Interstate 10 crosses the entire state of Texas from the Louisiana border at Orange to the New Mexico border west of El Paso — a distance of approximately 880 miles, making it the longest single-state interstate segment in the United States. For commercial truck drivers, this corridor is less about a single dramatic hazard and more about the cumulative toll of distance, heat, wind, isolation, and the fatigue that comes from driving through hundreds of miles of visually monotonous terrain.