Fatal Crash Data

How we count

Every figure on this site is counted from one public file: NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System. This page lists every rule applied on the way from that file to a page.

The source: NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is the US Department of Transportation's census of every crash on a public road in which someone died within 30 days. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) compiles it from police reports, death certificates and state records, one file per year since 1975. The files are public domain and can be downloaded from NHTSA.

This site uses the 2024 Annual Report File, released April 2026, the latest year NHTSA has published; the 2024 figures are from the Annual Report File and may be revised when NHTSA releases the final file. The 2025 file, with the final 2024 counts, is expected in spring 2027. State and national lines since 1975 use every yearly file; roads, counties and shares use 2015 to 2024, because road names are patchier in older files.

What a fatal crash is, and what a death is

A fatal crash is one crash, however many vehicles or people were in it, in which at least one person died within 30 days. Deaths are the people who died in it. A crash with three deaths counts once in a crash table and three times in a death table.

Shares on this site are shares of fatal crashes or of deaths, never rates per driver, per trip or per mile: FARS records crashes, not how much people drive. A state with many crashes may simply have many drivers.

How roads are named and ranked

  • Only numbered interstate, US and state routes are ranked and get pages, read from the road name NHTSA filed. County roads, city streets and unnamed roads stay in every state and county total but not in road tables. Business routes, loops and spurs named after a parent route ("US-83 Business") are left out of the parent's count.
  • NHTSA files the road name as free text. We read the route at the start of it: "I-35", "I-35/PURPLE HEART TRL" and "I 35" are the same road. The spellings each road page was built from are listed at its foot.
  • Crashes NHTSA filed on a ramp, frontage road or service road of a numbered route are left out of the road's count ("Left out" on the state page, with the number).
  • A road gets its own page with 15 or more fatal crashes in the state from 2022 to 2024. Roads are counted within a state; an interstate that crosses several states has a page per state.

The floors under every table, headline and share

  • Lists: a road or county appears in a ranking table from 5 fatal crashes in the window.
  • Headlines: a road or county only tops a ranking, holds a sentence ("the deadliest road in Vermont") or answers a question from 10 fatal crashes. Below that, the heading changes to say what the table shows without naming a worst.
  • Shares: a share (alcohol, speeding, dark, pedestrians) is only given over 20 crashes or deaths. Below that the page says "Not enough data".

Three labels for what is missing

  • Not reported: NHTSA coded the field as unknown or not reported. We never guess.
  • Not enough data: the figure exists but fewer than 20 crashes are under it, so the share would mean little.
  • Left out: the row is in the file but removed by one of our rules (ramps, frontage roads, unnumbered routes), with the reason and the count printed where it would have been.

What the factors mean

  • A drinking driver: NHTSA's drinking-driver flag for any driver in the crash: police-reported drinking, or any positive alcohol test (.01 or more). This is not NHTSA's "alcohol-impaired driving" figure, which counts deaths in crashes with a driver at .08 or more and estimates missing tests; that figure is higher (30% of deaths in 2024).
  • Speeding: any driver coded as exceeding the limit, too fast for conditions, racing, or speeding with specifics unknown.
  • Unbelted: occupants of passenger vehicles (cars, SUVs, vans, pickups) killed and coded as using no restraint, as a share of those whose belt use is known. Motorcyclists, and vehicles without belts such as ATVs, are not in the base.
  • Hit-and-run: any vehicle in the crash coded as having left the scene.
  • In the dark, road unlit: light condition "Dark, not lighted". Dusk, dawn, lit roads and "dark, lighting unknown" are separate and stay in the base.
  • Rural: NHTSA's rural or urban code for the crash location.
  • First harmful event: what the crash first hit: another vehicle in motion, a pedestrian, a tree, a rollover.
  • Vehicle types: NHTSA's body type codes grouped into cars, pickups, SUVs, vans, motorcycles (including mopeds and scooters), truck-tractors, other trucks and buses. Off-road vehicles, golf carts and farm equipment are counted in totals but never ranked.

When, where and who

Hour, weekday and month are as NHTSA records them. The weekday-by-time grid pools 2015 to 2024 so small states have enough crashes per cell. Who died comes from the person file: pedestrians, cyclists (bicyclists and other pedalcyclists), motorcyclists (occupants of a motorcycle, moped or scooter), occupants of other vehicles, and others (people on personal conveyances, in parked vehicles or in buildings). The five rows add up to every death.

What is not on this site

No names, no crash narratives, no addresses or coordinates of individual crashes, no photos. FARS is a public record of crashes, and this site shows it as counts and shares. No risk scores: FARS has no record of how much people drive, so a "risk of driving this road" number cannot be computed honestly.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, tell us with the page and the number, and we check it against the file. The build is one set of scripts that run from the raw file to every page, so a fix applies everywhere.