Traffic fatalities show a promising 3.6% drop in deaths from 42,514 in 2022 to 40,990 in 2023, according to an April 2024 estimate from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This decrease occurred simultaneously with a 67.5 billion increase in vehicle miles traveled, with eight of ten US regions showing a fatality decline.

After startling jumps in fatalities during the most intense periods of the pandemic, these statistics represent the seventh quarterly decrease, which began in the second quarter of 2022.

Among the states showing the largest percentage estimated decrease in fatalities between 2022 and 2023 were Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.

Those with the highest percentage estimated increase were Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Washington.

Several factors may have contributed to a transportation fatality increase during the earlier part of the pandemic.  For example, a NHTSA report on behavioral research findings between March 2020 and June 2021 found that more people were driving without seatbelts and that risky driving behaviors had increased during the pandemic – including speeding.

To reduce traffic fatalities, states have been taking a variety of actions, including changes to roadway design, installing traffic cameras, focusing on driver education and using data to analyze crashes and evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches to driver and road safety.

That said, states and local governments have yet to reduce fatalities to the level they were at ten years ago when the number of traffic deaths recorded by NHTSA in 2014 was 32,744.

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