Methodology

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site comes from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the federal census of fatal traffic crashes. FARS records every crash on a US public road that killed someone within 30 days. It is public domain and has run since 1975. We use the 2023 and 2022 national files.

Deaths, not crashes

FARS has one row per fatal crash, and a crash can kill more than one person. All totals here sum the FATALS field rather than counting rows, which is why 2023 shows 41,025 deaths across 37,769 crashes.

Why the rate, not the total

States are ranked by deaths per 100,000 residents, using US Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 state population estimates. Ranking by raw totals would simply rank states by population — Texas and California would top every list regardless of how safe their roads are. The national rate is 12.18.

What this does not show

• Rate per mile driven is not the same thing. A per-resident rate reflects how much people drive as well as how dangerous the roads are. A rural state where everyone drives far will rank worse partly for that reason.
• County figures are raw counts. We do not publish county rates, because county population estimates are noisier and small counties produce wild rates from a handful of deaths.
• Non-fatal crashes are absent. FARS only records crashes that killed someone. Injury crashes are many times more common and are not in this data.
• Hours are incomplete. Crashes with an unrecorded hour are excluded from the hourly chart, so it sums to slightly less than the national total.

Corrections

If a figure here disagrees with NHTSA’s own published tables, NHTSA is right and this site has a bug worth reporting.