Texas, citations by the numbers.
Texas writes more citations than any state except California. But inside its borders are two hundred fifty-four counties — more than any state in the country — each with its own justice-of-the-peace court, its own fine schedule, its own appetite for dismissal. Even within a single state, not all tickets are created equal.
- Geography
- 254 counties
- Population
- ~31M
- Updated
- May 2026
- Read time
- 6 min · interactive
Same citation, two hundred fifty-four different stories.
How often counties write tickets. Density of enforcement — not necessarily of bad driving.
The state, by cluster.
Counties don't enforce the law alone — they cluster. DFW and Houston Metro share suburban patterns; the Rio Grande Valley shares border-county patterns; the Panhandle and West Texas share plains-county patterns. Here are the regional medians on whichever measure you're looking at.
Where a single citation can ruin lives.
A closer look by county from across the state.
“The fine is not where the harm is. The harm is what happens to a job, a license, and a family when the deadline passes and no one knew what to do.”
How we built this map.
Sources
Texas Office of Court Administration case-management reports, county justice-of-the-peace court filings, the Texas DPS annual driver-license abstracts (FY 2023–25), and Auro's own intake panel. County-level aggregates only; no individual records appear on this page.
What we counted
Citations issued under the Texas Transportation Code, plus municipal-court parking citations where the county reports them. Federal offenses and citations issued on tribal lands are excluded.
What we didn't
Bias in enforcement. The disparity between which neighborhoods inside a county see the most citations and which see the fewest is real, and it does not appear in a county-level average. We're working on it.
Updates
Figures shown are illustrative composites for the May 2026 edition. We refresh annually as the Office of Court Administration and DPS publish their reports — typically Q3. Methodology notes are versioned at aurolegal.ai/method.
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