The graph displays the number of car accident fatalities by gender in the United States from 2010 to 2022. The x-axis represents the years, labeled from '10 to '22, while the y-axis indicates the number of fatalities. Each year includes data points for both males and females. Male fatalities range from a low of 22,937 in 2011 to a high of 30,964 in 2021. Female fatalities vary between 9,463 in 2014 and 12,135 in 2021. The data consistently shows that male fatalities are higher than female fatalities each year. There is a noticeable upward trend in fatalities for both genders in the later years, particularly in 2020 and 2021.

Motor-vehicle deaths in the United States have decreased greatly since the 1970s and 1980s. In 2022, there were around 13.8 deaths from motor vehicles per 100,000 population, compared to a rate of 26.8 deaths per 100,000 in 1970. Laws requiring drivers and passengers to wear safety belts and advancements in safety technology in vehicles are major drivers for these reductions.

Motor-vehicle accidents in the U.S.

Americans spend a significant amount of time behind the wheel. Many cities lack convenient and reliable public transportation and especially in rural areas, cars are a necessary means of transportation. In 2020, August was the month with the highest number of fatal crashes, followed by September and June. The deadliest time of day for fatal vehicle crashes is between 6 and 9 p.m., most likely due to the after-work rush hour and more people who are under the influence of alcohol.

Drinking and driving among youth

Drinking and driving remains a relevant problem across the United States and can be especially problematic among younger inexperienced drivers. As of 2017, around 5.5 percent of high school students reported they had driven while under the influence of alcohol. Drinking and driving is more common among males than females and Hispanic males reported drinking and driving more than other races or ethnicities.

Some 47,000 road traffic fatalities are projected to have occurred in the United States in 2021, which was the largest amount of fatalities recorded in the country since 2012. This fatality volume is estimated to dip in 2022, down to nearly 46,300. Motor vehicle crashes and drug overdoses are the leading causes of death among those under the age of 55 in the United States.

About 228,200 Americans had a license to operate a motor vehicle in the United States in 2020. That year, an estimated 36,680 people died on U.S. roads. Traffic-related fatalities per 100,000 licensed drivers stood at 17.01 in 2020.

Road safety rankings
The United States has among the highest rates of road fatalities per population worldwide. Possible contributing factors to deaths on the road can include speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and driving while fatigued. Traffic fatalities caused by speeding in the United States have declined since 2008, with less than 10,000 deaths recorded annually over recent years.

Automation for the nation
94 percent of severe automobile crashes are due to human error — but driving safety is taken much more seriously today than in the past, with roughly 90 percent of U.S. drivers wearing their seatbelts while driving in 2020. Over recent years, car manufacturers and developers have striven to reduce car crashes even further with partially and fully automated safety features such as forward collision warnings, lane departure warnings, rearview video systems, and automatic emergency braking. Self-driving vehicles are also set to take to the roads in the future, with car brands such as Toyota, Ford, and GM registering over 350 autonomous driving patents respectively in the United States.

In 2020, nearly 4.7 million passenger cars were involved in U.S. traffic crashes, accounting for 52 percent of the overall total. Second highest in number are light trucks, being involved in 3.8 million car crashes and accounting for 42 percent of the total. Motor vehicle crashes are among the leading causes of death among those under the age of 55 in the United States.

The number of road-traffic related injuries in the United States has decreased by roughly 17 percent between 2019 and 2020, whereas fatalities increased by almost 8 percent. Between 2010 and 2020, road traffic injuries in the United States grew by nearly 34,000 incidents to some 2.28 million road traffic related injuries in 2020. Over the same period, fatalities also increased by about 5,800. This follows two decades of a general decrease in the amount of traffic-related injuries.

Why are traffic injuries increasing? In the United States, male drivers are behind the wheel in the majority of fatal crashes. Though speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol are often to blame, neither have led to a rise in traffic fatalities in the U.S.: instead, cellphones are primarily the cause. Smartphone ownership has become almost omnipresent in the U.S. since 2010, and drivers are likely to be distracted by texting and using social media. Young drivers are the ones accounting for the highest share of cellphone use fatalities.

Changes in mobility Another reason why fatal accidents are rising in number is that non-occupants’ exposure to risk is also increasing. As residents become more encouraged to walk or cycle in cities, the extra time amongst traffic has led to higher rates of fatalities and injuries amongst cyclists and pedestrians. Lastly, poor infrastructure and lack of awareness by motorists is prevalent in large parts of the United States.

United States US: Road Fatalities: Per One Million Vehicle-km data was reported at 7.805 Ratio in 2023. This records a decrease from the previous number of 8.265 Ratio for 2022. United States US: Road Fatalities: Per One Million Vehicle-km data is updated yearly, averaging 8.404 Ratio from Dec 1994 (Median) to 2023, with 30 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 10.731 Ratio in 1994 and a record low of 6.725 Ratio in 2014. United States US: Road Fatalities: Per One Million Vehicle-km data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.OECD.ITF: Road Traffic and Road Accident Fatalities: OECD Member: Annual. [COVERAGE] ROAD FATALITIES A road fatality is any person killed immediately or dying within 30 days as a result of an injury accident, excluding suicides. A killed person is excluded if the competent authority declares the cause of death to be suicide, i.e. a deliberate act to injure oneself resulting in death. For countries that do not apply the threshold of 30 days, conversion coefficients are estimated so that comparison on the basis of the 30-day definition can be made. ROAD TRAFFIC Road traffic is any movement of a road vehicle on a given road network. When a road vehicle is being carried on another vehicle, only the movement of the carrying (active mode) is considered. [COVERAGE] ROAD TRAFFIC IRTAD - Data refer to road motor vehicle traffic of motorised two-wheelers, passenger cars, goods road motor vehicles and buses. [STAT_CONC_DEF] ROAD TRAFFIC IRTAD - Data are calculated using automatic and manual roadside traffic counts.

In 2022, the state of California reported almost 4,100 motor-vehicle deaths, a slight decrease from the year before. Death from motor-vehicles remains a relevant problem across the United States.

Motor-vehicle deaths in the United States

In the United States, a person’s lifetime odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident is around 1 in 93. Death rates from motor vehicles have decreased in recent years and are significantly lower than the rates recorded in the 1970s and 1980s. This is due to a mass improvement in car safety standards and features. For example, all states, with the exception of New Hampshire, have laws against not wearing safety belts.

Drinking and driving

One of the biggest causes of motor-vehicle deaths is driving while under the influence of alcohol. The state with the highest number of fatalities due to alcohol-impaired driving in 2020 was Texas, followed by California and Florida. Passenger cars are the vehicle type most often involved in fatal crashes caused by alcohol-impaired drivers, with around 4,726 such accidents in the United States in 2020.

The number of road accidents per one million inhabitants in the United States was forecast to continuously decrease between 2024 and 2029 by in total 2,490.4 accidents (-14.99 percent). After the eighth consecutive decreasing year, the number is estimated to reach 14,118.78 accidents and therefore a new minimum in 2029. Depicted here are the estimated number of accidents which occured in relation to road traffic. They are set in relation to the population size and depicted as accidents per one million inhabitants.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of road accidents per one million inhabitants in countries like Mexico and Canada.

The Motor Vehicle Collisions vehicle table contains details on each vehicle involved in the crash. Each row represents a motor vehicle involved in a crash. The data in this table goes back to April 2016 when crash reporting switched to an electronic system.

The Motor Vehicle Collisions data tables contain information from all police reported motor vehicle collisions in NYC. The police report (MV104-AN) is required to be filled out for collisions where someone is injured or killed, or where there is at least $1000 worth of damage (https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/ny_overlay_mv-104an_rev05_2004.pdf). It should be noted that the data is preliminary and subject to change when the MV-104AN forms are amended based on revised crash details.

Due to success of the CompStat program, NYPD began to ask how to apply the CompStat principles to other problems. Other than homicides, the fatal incidents with which police have the most contact with the public are fatal traffic collisions. Therefore in April 1998, the Department implemented TrafficStat, which uses the CompStat model to work towards improving traffic safety. Police officers complete form MV-104AN for all vehicle collisions. The MV-104AN is a New York State form that has all of the details of a traffic collision. Before implementing Trafficstat, there was no uniform traffic safety data collection procedure for all of the NYPD precincts. Therefore, the Police Department implemented the Traffic Accident Management System (TAMS) in July 1999 in order to collect traffic data in a uniform method across the City. TAMS required the precincts manually enter a few selected MV-104AN fields to collect very basic intersection traffic crash statistics which included the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities. As the years progressed, there grew a need for additional traffic data so that more detailed analyses could be conducted. The Citywide traffic safety initiative, Vision Zero started in the year 2014. Vision Zero further emphasized the need for the collection of more traffic data in order to work towards the Vision Zero goal, which is to eliminate traffic fatalities. Therefore, the Department in March 2016 replaced the TAMS with the new Finest Online Records Management System (FORMS). FORMS enables the police officers to electronically, using a Department cellphone or computer, enter all of the MV-104AN data fields and stores all of the MV-104AN data fields in the Department’s crime data warehouse. Since all of the MV-104AN data fields are now stored for each traffic collision, detailed traffic safety analyses can be conducted as applicable.

The number of road traffic fatalities per one million inhabitants in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 18.5 deaths (+13.81 percent). After the tenth consecutive increasing year, the number is estimated to reach 152.46 deaths and therefore a new peak in 2029. Depicted here are the estimated number of deaths which occured in relation to road traffic. They are set in relation to the population size and depicted as deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of road traffic fatalities per one million inhabitants in countries like Mexico and Canada.

This collection focuses on how changes in the legal drinking age affect the number of fatal motor vehicle accidents and crime rates. The principal investigators identified three areas of study. First, they looked at blood alcohol content of drivers involved in fatal accidents in relation to changes in the drinking age. Second, they looked at how arrest rates correlated with changes in the drinking age. Finally, they looked at the relationship between blood alcohol content and arrest rates. In this context, the investigators used the percentage of drivers killed in fatal automobile accidents who had positive blood alcohol content as an indicator of drinking in the population. Arrests were used as a measure of crime, and arrest rates per capita were used to create comparability across states and over time. Arrests for certain crimes as a proportion of all arrests were used for other analyses to compensate for trends that affect the probability of arrests in general. This collection contains three parts. Variables in the Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data file (Part 1) include the state and year to which the data apply, the type of crime, and the sex and age category of those arrested for crimes. A single arrest is the unit of analysis for this file. Information in the Population Data file (Part 2) includes population counts for the number of individuals within each of seven age categories, as well as the number in the total population. There is also a figure for the number of individuals covered by the reporting police agencies from which data were gathered. The individual is the unit of analysis. The Fatal Accident Data file (Part 3) includes six variables: the FIPS code for the state, year of accident, and the sex, age group, and blood alcohol content of the individual killed. The final variable in each record is a count of the number of drivers killed in fatal motor vehicle accidents for that state and year who fit into the given sex, age, and blood alcohol content grouping. A driver killed in a fatal accident is the unit of analysis.

In 2022, 20,908 drivers were killed in U.S. road traffic fatalities. The number of road traffic fatalities in the United States by person type in 2022 exceeds 42,500 in total.

In 2023, the number of deaths caused by traffic accidents amounted to approximately 11,628 cases in Vietnam. This indicated a decrease from the previous year. From 2013 to 2021, the number of traffic deaths has gradually declined, then increased dramatically in 2022, with the number of deaths due to crashes double than that in 2021.

In 2022, around 11 people per 1 million inhabitants died as a result of road accidents in Chile. New Zealand, with around seven fatalities per 1 million inhabitants, was second in the ranking.

In 2023, China recorded 60,028 fatalities in traffic accidents across the country. The number of fatalities has increased from 60,676in the previous year. Road traffic in China The number of road traffic fatalities in China varies greatly from region to region. Guangdong and Hubei had been the provinces with the highest number of traffic fatalities. All located in the eastern coastal area of China, they had also been the regions with the most traffic accidents in 2023. On the contrary, only a small number of fatalities had been reported in central and western regions of China. Reasons for this imbalance may be found in less traffic volume as well as the existence of fewer urban congested areas.Since 2016, the number of casualties and fatalities from traffic accidents in China has increased significantly, reaching 25,3895 injuries and 60,028 deaths in 2023. Nevertheless, traffic accidents have emerged as one of the leading causes of death in China. The primary reasons may be unregulated road works and a lack of awareness among Chinese drivers. The development of neither road infrastructure nor driving behavior in China had been able to keep up with the increasing number of traffic participants and registered cars. As of 2003, only 24 million vehicles had been registered in China, whereas by 2019 that number had skyrocketed to 253.76 million cars. In 2023 alone, the number of newly registered vehicles in China had amounted to around 24.5 million cars.

In 2022, the number of fatalities in road traffic accidents in Indonesia was approximately 27.53 thousand persons, indicating an increase compared to the previous year. During the time under consideration, the highest number of fatalities was reached in 2017, with over 30 thousand persons dying in traffic accidents.

An overall decline in the number of road deaths in Russia was observed from 2007, when the highest volume of road fatalities was recorded countrywide in the given timeframe. The temporary growth of five percent between 2010 and 2012 was followed by a significant drop in the number of incidences over the following years. Namely, the count of road deaths in the country reduced nearly twofold by 2020 relative to the 2012 figures, measuring at 16,152 cases in the last observed period.

Mortality rate and causes of death in Russia   

Mortality rate has been gradually declining since 2000 in Russia, yet it remained greater than the rates measured prior to the 1990s. Even though road accidents were not the major cause of fatalities in the country, roughly 183 thousand residents were reported being injured in road traffic incidents in 2020. The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak at the beginning of 2020 ranked Russia as one of the most affected worldwide. The coronavirus-related mortality rate, nonetheless, was measured significantly lower than in most countries with a somewhat similar number of disease cases.

General outlook   

Despite the fact that road fatalities have been in decline in Russia, the country was listed second by road mortality worldwide after Georgia in 2017. The most significant decline in road death rates among the European countries was recorded in Norway in the same year.

In the period of consideration, the number of road traffic fatalities in Romania peaked in 2008, totaling 3,065 deaths. Despite minor oscillations, the number of victims recorded a declining trend. Thus, by 2020 road traffic fatalities reached 1,646. This represented a decrease of roughly 40 percent compared to 2008. By contrast, the number of non-fatal road traffic injuries decreased to almost 28 thousand in 2020.

 Main causes of road traffic accidents  

In Romania, the main cause of road traffic accidents was speeding. At the same time, drinking among drivers and pedestrians who were jaywalking was still an important concern in 2019. As a consequence, there were 1,452 male car drivers under the influence of alcohol involved in car accidents in which at least one person was injured. Just as important, more than six thousand car accidents in 2019 happened because of collisions due to crossing or turning.

Crimes against road traffic safety 

Compared to the last decade, in Romania, as well as worldwide, there has been a change regarding the types of crimes committed. As a result, traditional crimes such as offenses against one’s physical and mental integrity, along with offenses against one’s property decreased. Instead, corruption offenses and crimes against road traffic safety became more common. In 2018, crimes against safety on public roads accounted for 37.6 percent of the total share of criminal law convictions.