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A crash on IH-45 North southbound at N Shepherd Drive backed up traffic hard this morning. The wreck happened at 6:55 AM on Monday, June 01, sending commuters hunting for alternate routes during the start of the week.
Responding officers cleared the scene, but the backup rippled across the northbound lanes during those critical early-morning minutes. If you're heading that direction now, the Hardy Toll Road, SH-249 northwest, or local streets via Airline Drive will get you around the mess faster.
This spot keeps showing up on the incident map. According to LocalTrafficAccidents.com data, IH-45 North southbound at N Shepherd has logged 80 crashes in the past 30 days — 52 of them major incidents like this one. Zoom out to 90 days and the count climbs to 266 total incidents, with 157 rated major. The corridor has recorded 345 incidents over the past 12 months.
One piece of context worth noting: the timing pattern here is unusual. Most crashes at this location fall outside the traditional weekday commute peaks. The single busiest hour is actually 3 to 4 PM, when 22 crashes occurred over the lookback period. A Monday morning wreck at 6:55 AM lands outside the corridor's typical peak, though it still creates real delay for people heading to work.
Looking at the bigger picture, TxDOT CRIS public crash records show 1,663 crashes within about a quarter-mile of this location since January 2020, with four fatalities. Contributing factors as recorded by investigating officers, per TxDOT CRIS, show "Failed To Control Speed" as the most common officer-recorded factor, appearing in 370 crashes at the corridor.
The weather this morning was clear — broken clouds and 80 degrees — so conditions weren't a complicating factor.
Traffic should normalize within the hour as crews finish clearing debris and reopen the affected lanes. Keep an eye on real-time updates if you're using this stretch of 45 regularly today.
This report was produced by LTA's editor-designed production system under the executive editorial direction of Dennis R. Mundy, Executive Editor. The system combines our proprietary data pipeline with AI-assisted drafting to deliver verified incident coverage to LTA's editorial standards.