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Dallas is still far from achieving the goals outlined in Vision Zero, the 2019 pledge to reduce injuries from car crashes and eliminate traffic-related fatalities citywide by 2030. However, for the first time since the plan was passed, 2025 saw significant progress made toward that objective.
According to city data that tracks fatalities and serious injuries in accidents involving cars, pedestrians, motorcycles, bicycles and other forms of transportation, incidents resulting in death fell by nearly half this year compared to 2024. Dallas’ streets saw 107 accidents resulting in fatalities this year, down from 208 in 2024.
While there are still a few weeks left in 2025, and although some experts warn that traffic accidents become more frequent around the holidays, this year will likely be the least-deadly on Dallas’ roads since at least 2015. Accidents resulting in serious injury have also fallen drastically. Across all types of accidents, 595 resulted in serious injury in 2025 compared to 935 in 2024. Between midnight and 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings are the most deadly times of the week for accidents to occur.
The city dashboard is compiled using the Texas Department of Transportation’s Crash Records Information System, which reports severe accidents reported by various agencies, including the Dallas Police Department, the Department of Public Safety and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.
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According to the data, around 7% of roads in Dallas are responsible for more than half of the city’s severe crashes. Part of the Vision Zero strategy has been to study and address those high-risk city streets by adding safety improvements. In recent years, some city council members have voiced concerns that the plan was not progressing quickly enough, although this year saw several Vision Zero projects hit significant milestones.
In November, city leaders highlighted improvements made along Loop 12, which had long been considered one of Dallas’ deadliest roads, under the Vision Zero framework. New stoplights are being installed along the loop, and DART is removing some bus stations to help reduce pedestrian traffic in the area. Council member Cara Mendelsohn said the progress made on Vision Zero, along with the 2025 data that suggests the plan is making progress, is a testament to the city staffers who have advocated for the strategy.
“Since Gus Khankarli became [Dallas’] transportation director, he has just been devoted to [Vision Zero],” said Mendelsohn. “There’s no easy fix. It’s just constantly being mindful of high injury locations and making improvement after improvement after improvement. So I think that’s a win for him.”
She also pointed to the increased traffic enforcement measures introduced by the Dallas Police Department this year as a possible reason for the improvement in the data. Following the hiring of police Chief Daniel Comeaux, the department intensified its enforcement of seatbelt use and speeding. In July, the department’s “operation slowdown” resulted in 1,752 traffic citations over a two-week period. Over the course of the year, road rage and DWI enforcement efforts resulted in 3,847 citations issued during road rage enforcement and 451 DWI arrests year-to-date, the police department said. Additionally, an August program dedicated to school zone monitoring resulted in nearly 1,000 citations.
“These efforts, combined with ongoing Vision Zero initiatives through Transportation and Public Works, have led to 46 fewer traffic deaths [at accidents responded to by DPD] year-to-date compared to this day in 2024,” the department said.
Speed is overwhelmingly the top factor leading to fatal accidents across Dallas; it has been the top driver of deadly crashes in nine of the last 10 years. Of Dallas’ 108 fatal accidents in 2025, 44 are believed to have been caused by speeding. The next highest contributing factor was impairment, which was responsible for 23 fatal accidents.
According to Melissa Kingston, a city plan commissioner who also helped lead a multi-year audit of the city’s street design processes as part of the Street Design Manual Work Group, Dallas has long held on to an outdated, car-centric approach to city planning, which could contribute to faster speeds on the roads. When Kingston presented the report’s findings to the council in November, she warned that some policies aimed at facilitating safer streets, such as lower speed limits and sharper curb radii, are being “overlooked.”
Overall, however, the work group found that recent changes in city leadership have led to city departments complying more closely with the Vision Zero plan.
“It’s sort of the old school way of looking at things, where you want to move as many cars as fast as you can, and you accept that the consequence for that is going to be more deaths and injuries,” Kingston told the Observer. “Vision Zero takes a more modern approach, which is, yes, we want to be mindful of traffic and congestion and environmental impacts that are produced by that. But we also have to share the road. And there is a certain amount of delay or traffic that we’re going to have to accept if we want to stop killing the people that use the roads.”
