Fatal car crashes in Garland, TX: deadliest roads, 2020-2024

From 2020 through 2024, federal crash records list 88 fatal crashes inside Garland, in which 95 people died. The roads with the most were I-30 with 18 fatal crashes, I-635 with 9 and Garland Ave (State Route 78) with 6.

Filing deadline, fault rule, insurance and the court for a crash in Garland: Garland, TX injury guide.

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is NHTSA's record of fatal traffic crashes nationwide, limited to crashes on public roads in which a death follows within 30 days. Garland's 2023 file contains 20 such crashes, every one in Dallas County and on a road coded urban, and 22 deaths. Since a crash only enters FARS when someone dies, the two extra deaths mean either that one crash killed three people or that two crashes killed two people apiece; the summary used here does not say which.

Garland's crashes were overwhelmingly nighttime events. Street lights were present for 14 crashes in darkness, 2 more happened in unlit darkness and 1 in darkness with the lighting unrecorded, so 17 of 20, or 85 percent, took place after dark, and only 3 happened in daylight. By the clock, 13 of Garland's crashes fall in the late-night block that runs from 9 at night to 5 in the morning, leaving 7 for the rest of the day. Rain fell during 4 crashes, clouds covered 5 and the other 11 had clear weather.

FARS assigns each crash a first harmful event, the first injury or damage in the crash. In Garland that event was a collision between two moving vehicles in 7 crashes: 5 angle crashes, 1 same-direction sideswipe and 1 rear-to-side impact. Curbs were the first thing hit in 5 crashes, a concrete traffic barrier in 2 and a tree in 1, and in another crash a person fell or jumped from a vehicle. The remaining 4 began with a pedestrian being hit. Sunday and Thursday had 4 crashes each, and June's 3 were the most for any month, though every month had at least one.

Five crashes involved a non-motorist, meaning a person who was not traveling in a moving motor vehicle, such as someone walking or riding a bicycle, and those crashes involved 6 non-motorists. Four of the 5 began with a pedestrian being hit, and the fifth began with some other event. By location, 10 crashes carried the non-junction code, which rules out intersections, interchanges and driveways; 3 happened within an intersection, 2 were intersection-related, 2 were coded as on the through roadway, and an interchange area, a ramp and a driveway accounted for 1 each.

FARS gives each road a functional class describing its job in the road network. Other principal arterials carried 8 of Garland's crashes and minor arterials 6, so arterials, the roads meant to move through traffic across a city, account for 14 of 20, or 70 percent. Interstates carried 4 and local streets 2. A road with heavy traffic tends to log more crashes simply because more vehicles use it, so these counts locate the deaths rather than rank roads by risk.

Each name below is the trafficway field from a crash record, shown with normal capitalization and without the MU- prefix FARS gives municipal streets. The I-635 count joins two codings of the same interstate, one of them a ramp. The summary's 12 codings name the road for 15 crashes and leave 5 unnamed. The list mixes city streets, such as Miller Rd and Firewheel Pkwy, with interstates.

• Miller Rd, I-30 and Firewheel Pkwy: 2 fatal crashes each.
• I-635, 2 crashes across two codings: I-635/LBJ Fwy and I-635 Ramp, 1 each.
• Broadway Blvd, First St, Garland Ave and Duck Creek Dr: 1 each.
• Shadwell Dr, Buckingham Rd and SR-78: 1 each.

Crash records describe what happened first, not why. Nothing in this summary covers speed, alcohol, fatigue or distraction, so any explanation of Garland's night-heavy record is a hypothesis. Possible contributors include reduced visibility, faster driving on emptier roads, tired drivers and slick pavement in the 4 crashes that happened in rain. Testing any of these requires the evidence from a specific crash, and the summary does not show whether the rainy crashes or the curb strikes were the late-night ones.

When a crash starts with a curb, a barrier or a tree, there may have been only one vehicle involved, and the claim works differently from a two-car collision. An injured passenger generally claims against the driver's liability coverage, even if the driver is a relative or friend, because the insurer, not the driver, typically pays. If another driver's actions forced the car off its path, that driver may share the blame, but proving it without contact or witnesses can be difficult. A defective road or barrier raises a separate claim against a governmental unit, with its own deadline.

Darkness also thins out the evidence. A late-night crash may have no independent witnesses, which puts more weight on physical proof: event data recorders, which can store speed and braking data from the moments before a crash, tire marks, scrapes on curbs and barriers, and video from businesses, apartment complexes or traffic cameras. Much of it can be lost within days unless someone asks for it to be preserved. Because Texas divides money according to fault, early preservation can change the outcome.

This scenario is fictional. Picture a rainy night in 2025: you and a coworker are passengers in a friend's car in Garland when the friend, driving too fast for the wet road, loses control, clips a curb and slams into a concrete barrier. Both of you are badly hurt. Your medical bills come to $50,000 and your coworker's to $25,000. Your friend's policy carries only the Texas minimum: no more than $30,000 for each person hurt, with a $60,000 ceiling for the crash as a whole.

As passengers, neither of you was steering, so fault rests mainly with the driver, though the insurer may still look for arguments to reduce what it pays. Suppose your total damages, including lost pay and pain and suffering, are valued at $120,000 and your coworker's at $60,000. The per-person cap limits each of you to $30,000, and the two payments together use up the $60,000 per-crash limit. That leaves $90,000 of your losses and $30,000 of your coworker's beyond the friend's coverage.

Your own policies may then matter more than the friend's. Underinsured motorist coverage, if either of you bought it, may pay part of that remaining amount up to its limit, and PIP or medical payments coverage on the friend's policy or your own could have paid some bills early. Collecting the rest from the friend personally is possible in theory but often impractical. Only an attorney who reviews the actual policies, medical records and crash evidence can say what claims like these are worth.

A night crash leaves evidence that fades quickly: few witnesses, lighting that is hard to reconstruct, and video systems that overwrite old footage. The list below works for anyone hurt, whether driving, riding or walking, and a family member or friend can work through most of it during recovery. None of these steps obliges anyone to bring a claim or hire anyone.

Start one claim file and add to it as papers arrive: the report number, every claim number, photos, medical records and bills, and proof of time missed at work. Keep conversations with the other side's insurer brief and factual, and sign nothing that releases a claim until its effect is clear. If several people were hurt, ask the insurer how many claims are pending against the same policy limit.

• Call 911, ask which agency is taking the report and write down its number.
• Where it is safe, photograph the vehicles, curbs, barriers, road surface and nearby lights.
• Record the names and numbers of witnesses and of everyone who was in each vehicle.
• Ask apartment managers and businesses near the scene, in writing, to keep their video from that night.
• See a doctor within a day, even for minor pain, and save the records.
• Request the at-fault driver's liability limits in writing and review your own uninsured, underinsured, PIP and medical payments coverage.
• Act fast if a city vehicle or a road defect may be involved, because the six-month notice period in § 101.101 can be even shorter under a city charter.

A statute of limitations sets the last day to file a lawsuit, and it differs from state to state. Texas generally gives an injured person two years after the crash to sue, and relatives bringing a wrongful death case two years after the death; both periods come from § 16.003 of the state's Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Washington and New York allow three years for injury suits and Missouri five. A Texas governmental unit is owed notice of a claim within six months by § 101.101, a period that some city charters cut further.

Rules for shared fault differ even more. Texas assigns fault under modified comparative negligence, using a 51 percent bar: a person found 50 percent or less at fault recovers damages reduced by that share, and a person found more at fault recovers nothing. Nevada and Ohio work the same way, while Kansas bars recovery at 50 percent, a step earlier. North Carolina keeps contributory negligence, which can bar a claim for 1 percent of fault, though its last clear chance doctrine sometimes allows recovery anyway.

Texas is a fault-based insurance state, so injured people usually claim against the at-fault driver's liability policy. No-fault states such as Kansas, Utah and New York make each injured person's own personal injury protection the first payer and restrict lawsuits over pain and suffering; Kansas sets that threshold at $2,000 of treatment or a specified serious injury. The Texas minimum is 30/60/25, and because minimums can change, what counts is the policy that was active when the crash happened. Larger Texas injury suits are generally filed in District Court, and claims against government bodies may face damage limits.

Garland's 2023 record includes features that can make a claim harder to prove: darkness, few witnesses and, in 8 crashes, a first impact with a curb, barrier or tree rather than another vehicle or a person. For anyone hurt in a similar crash, the central questions are who was at fault, how much liability coverage exists and what the injured person's own policy adds. Most personal injury attorneys work on contingency, which generally means their fee is a percentage of any recovery.

Ask Legal Matters is a free claim-review request service and a lead-generation service, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Requests may be shared with independent attorneys and legal services partners who handle inquiries in Texas. Only an attorney who has studied the facts can judge whether there is a claim and what it might be worth. If a Garland crash injured you as a driver, passenger or pedestrian, you can request a free claim review.

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Need local rules? Choose your state from the injury law guides hub or read the statute of limitations by state.