A major crash at the intersection of IH-10 East and IH-45 North brought traffic to a crawl Monday evening at 6:12 PM on February 16, 2026. The collision occurred during peak commute hours, creating significant backups across one of Houston's most critical highway junctions in Harris County.
The timing couldn't be worse for eastbound drivers. With rush hour in full swing, expect delays stretching back several miles along IH-10 East toward downtown Houston. Commuters heading east should consider taking surface streets through the Midtown and EaDo corridors, or diverting north on IH-45 toward The Woodlands before cutting east on TX-288 or other north-side routes. For those coming from the southwest, US-59 South provides a viable alternative that bypasses this bottleneck entirely.
This stretch of IH-10 East where it meets IH-45 North is notoriously problematic during peak hours. The interchange handles traffic merging from multiple directions simultaneously—northbound I-45 stacking onto eastbound I-10, plus local traffic from downtown—creating a perfect storm for accidents. The area sees some of the heaviest congestion in the Houston metro area, particularly in the late afternoon and early evening when suburban commuters flood back toward the city core.
The crash occurred in the westbound direction on IH-10 East at the I-45 North junction. As of late evening, authorities continued working the scene. Drivers in the affected area should remain alert for debris, stopped traffic, and emergency vehicles operating in active lanes. Spillover congestion is expected to impact nearby connector roads, particularly the local feeder roads running parallel to I-10 between downtown and the East End.
This major incident will likely add 20-30 minutes to typical commute times through this corridor. Traffic recovery typically takes considerably longer given the interchange's complexity and the hour of occurrence.
The month leading up to this incident brought 31 crashes to this location.
The location's running count has added 682 crashes since this incident. 467 of the more recent crashes were major. 4 of the subsequent crashes resulted in a fatality.
The pace of crashes at this location has slowed since.
A cluster of those crashes happened within roughly two weeks.
That total ranks this location among the highest-incident corridors in the county.
Updated through August 23, 2026.
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.