How Many People Die in Speeding Crashes Each Year?

Quick answer: In 2024, 11,288 people died in speeding-related crashes on US roads — 29 percent of the 39,254 people killed in all traffic crashes that year, or about 31 deaths every day. That was a 5 percent fall from 11,913 in 2023, but still 16 percent higher than the 9,723 speeding deaths recorded in 2015, according to NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts on speeding.

How many people die in speeding crashes each year

NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System tracks speeding deaths every year. The last ten years look like this:

• 2015: 9,723 (27% of all road deaths)
• 2016: 10,291 (27%)
• 2017: 9,947 (27%)
• 2018: 9,579 (26%)
• 2019: 9,592 (26%)
• 2020: 11,428 (29%)
• 2021: 12,498 (29%) — the highest of the decade
• 2022: 12,157 (28%)
• 2023: 11,775 (29%)
• 2024: 11,288 (29%)

Deaths rose sharply in the pandemic years, when emptier roads led to faster driving, then fell for three years in a row. But the 2024 total is still about 1,500 higher than in 2019.

What counts as a speeding crash

NHTSA counts a crash as speeding-related when the police report says a driver was exceeding the posted speed limit or driving too fast for the conditions — for example on a wet or icy road where even the legal limit would have been unsafe. It is not only about breaking the limit.

Speeding is deadlier than the crash numbers suggest

Speeding shows up in a modest share of all crashes but a much larger share of the deadly ones:

• In 2024, about 10 percent of all police-reported traffic crashes were speeding-related.
• But 28 percent of fatal crashes were speeding-related, compared with 13 percent of injury crashes and 8 percent of property-damage-only crashes.
• Of the 55,620 drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2024, 19 percent were speeding at the time.
• An estimated 316,757 people were injured in speeding-related crashes in 2024 — 13 percent of everyone injured on the roads, down 5 percent from 332,751 in 2023.

In other words, speed does not just cause crashes — it decides how bad they are.

Why speed makes crashes deadlier

The physics is unforgiving. Braking distance grows with the square of speed: doubling your speed roughly quadruples the distance needed to stop. A driver's reaction time adds about a second and a half of travel before the brakes even engage — at 60 mph that is around 130 feet of extra road. Use the stopping distance calculator to see how speed, reaction time and road surface change the numbers.

Higher speed also means far more energy to absorb in a crash. The same collision that people walk away from at 30 mph becomes unsurvivable at 60. This is exactly why speeding is overrepresented in fatal crashes and underrepresented in minor fender-benders.

The pandemic spike — and the slow decline

Speeding deaths jumped 19 percent between 2019 and 2020, from 9,592 to 11,428, even though total driving fell. Emptier roads encouraged riskier driving, and the toll kept climbing to 12,498 in 2021.

Since then the trend has turned: down 3 percent in 2022, down 3 percent in 2023, and down 5 percent in 2024. Total road deaths fell too, from 43,230 in 2021 to 39,254 in 2024 — but speeding's share has stayed stubbornly at 29 percent. Nearly three in ten US road deaths still involve speed.

Which states lose the biggest share to speeding

The national share is 29 percent, but it varies widely. The site's US statistics page, built from NHTSA FARS 2024 via IIHS state-by-state tables, shows the highest speeding shares of 2024 deaths in Vermont (54 percent), Alaska (50 percent), Montana (43 percent), North Carolina (42 percent) and Hawaii (42 percent). At the other end, Florida (11 percent) and Kentucky (13 percent) had the lowest shares — though with far more traffic, their absolute numbers are much larger.

What brings speeding deaths down

There is no single fix, but the measures with the strongest evidence all slow traffic where it matters: enforced speed limits, automated speed cameras in high-risk zones, road designs that make fast driving feel uncomfortable — narrower lanes, roundabouts, speed humps — and vehicle technology that warns or intervenes when the limit is exceeded. The long-run trend can move: speeding deaths fell 5 percent in 2024 after falling in each of the two previous years.

How these numbers were counted

All figures come from NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts: 2024 Data on speeding, drawn from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the census of every fatal crash on US public roads. The 2024 figures use the Annual Report File, which can still be revised when the final file is published. Injury counts are estimates from police-reported crash data. A crash counts as speeding-related when police report that speeding was a contributing factor. NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts on speeding

Compare with alcohol-impaired driving deaths by state, see today's reports on the live map, or browse US road statistics.