Video of Fort Worth, Texas, car pileup is from 2021, not New Year’s Day 2025

In a video, cars and trucks slide across a road and slam into one another, leading to a massive crash.

An onlooker can be heard exclaiming, "Oh s—! Oh my gosh!"

A Jan. 2 Instagram post shared the video, with text that said:  "Absolutely crazy footage from the Fort Worth, Texas pileup, January (1st), 2025."

(Screenshot from Instagram)

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A reverse-image search showed the video is not from New Year’s Day. It captured an incident that occurred almost four years ago.

The Dallas Morning News in October posted this video on its website and reported that it happened Feb. 11, 2021. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation report on the crash, publicly released in 2023, said the incident started around 6 a.m. on Interstate 35 West in Fort Worth, Texas, "when several vehicles in the southbound toll lanes slid on the elevated roadway and struck the concrete barriers beside the toll lanes." 

The crash involved 130 vehicles. Six people died.

The board’s investigation highlighted safety issues related to monitoring and treating the roadway during inclement weather. It found that the icy road surface "made drivers lose control of their vehicles."

"As approaching drivers encountered the vehicles involved in these initial crashes, they were unable to stop on the icy roadway, leading to secondary crashes," the report said. It also found that drivers were "traveling at speeds too fast for the winter weather conditions."

The incident did not occur in 2025. We rate this claim False.