An orange Dodge Ram and a white Ford pickup collided on I-45 northbound near Washington Avenue at 8:18 AM Thursday morning, August 6, creating a major traffic backup during the early part of the commute.
Responding officers worked to clear the wreckage, but the crash added to the already heavy volume on this stretch of I-45. The road saw major delays as crews managed the scene and removed the damaged vehicles.
This morning's wreck is the latest incident at an intersection that's become a consistent flashpoint for crashes. According to LocalTrafficAccidents.com data, I-45 N and Washington Avenue has recorded 71 incidents in the past 30 days alone—41 of them classified as major. Over the past 90 days, the location has seen 243 total crashes, with 142 rated as major. The 12-month total stands at 554 incidents, including 314 major crashes and 2 fatalities.
Over a 30-day period before today's incident, crews recorded 49 crashes within a quarter-mile of this location, per LTA real-time data. The intersection remains active: since this morning's wreck, 3 additional crashes have been recorded in the immediate area.
While crashes here occur at varied times rather than concentrating in one narrow window, the single busiest hour at this location is 4–5 PM, when 19 crashes have been logged over the tracking period.
Contributing factors as recorded by investigating officers, per TxDOT CRIS public crash records, show "Failed To Control Speed" as the leading factor at this corridor, cited in 534 crashes since January 2020. Hit-and-run incidents account for 10.3% of crashes here—421 of the 4,085 units involved in those crashes.
Conditions were clear this morning, with temperatures at 86 degrees at the time of the collision. The wreckage was cleared and traffic resumed normal flow on the northbound side following standard incident response procedures. If you're heading northbound on I-45 through this area, expect residual congestion as volume builds toward the mid-morning peak.
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.