US Traffic Deaths Fall 2.5% to 16,750, but 15 States and DC Rose

• NHTSA estimates 16,750 people died in US traffic crashes from January through June 2026, down 2.5% from 17,175 a year earlier.
• NHTSA projects a first-half fatality rate of 1.02 deaths per 100 million miles driven, the second lowest on record behind only the 1.01 of 2014.
• The decline is fading: deaths rose in May and June, and 15 states plus Washington, D.C. are projected to have lost more people than a year ago.

The Drop Is Real, but Almost All of It Came in the First Three Months

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) projects that 16,750 people died in motor vehicle crashes between January and June 2026. That is 425 fewer than the 17,175 projected for the same six months of 2025, a drop of 2.5%, and it arrived while Americans drove about 12.9 billion more miles, a 0.8% rise in vehicle miles traveled.

The rate gives a better read on risk per trip. NHTSA puts it at 1.02 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, down from 1.05 in the first half of 2025. If the estimate holds, it is the second lowest first-half rate on record. Only the 1.01 of the first half of 2014 was lower. The last first half with fewer deaths was 2015, at 16,193.

The catch sits in the calendar. Deaths fell 5.0% in the first quarter, which is 405 fewer than a year earlier, and 0.2% in the second quarter, which is 20 fewer. The first quarter’s 405 fewer deaths make up 95% of the 425 saved over the half. May and June both finished above 2025.

NHTSA announced the numbers on Tuesday, Nov. 10, and its administrator called it progress with work left to do.

“We’ve made progress on road safety, but the Trump Administration isn’t letting up,” said NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison. “Even with near-record low fatality rates, we will continue to work with a sense of urgency to make sure more Americans get home safely. Through our Pathways to Safer Streets initiative, we are tackling the leading causes of traffic deaths— from reckless driving to impaired driving—while funding critical lifesaving measures like prehospital blood programs.”

What the 16,750 Figure Is, and What It Is Not Yet

The number is a statistical projection and carries a margin for revision. NHTSA’s statistics office built it for report DOT HS 813 875, the Crash Stats brief for the first half of 2026. Spread across the 181 days from Jan. 1 to Jun. 30, the estimate works out to about 93 deaths a day.

The underlying count comes from FARS, NHTSA’s national fatal crash database, a census of fatal crashes in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. A crash counts when a motor vehicle on a trafficway kills at least one person within 30 days. Final FARS files take time to finish, so the early estimate blends the older FARS years with two data sets the public cannot see, NHTSA’s Early Notification data and its Monthly Fatality Counts. A regression model runs those inputs, and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) supplies the miles driven from its Traffic Volume Trends series.

The 2025 baseline is a projection too. NHTSA expects small revisions to both years once the FARS annual reporting file for 2025 lands later this year, with more to follow in 2027 as the 2025 final file and the 2026 annual file are released. The full-year 2025 projection sits at 36,640 deaths, down 6.7% from 39,254 in 2024, with a rate of 1.10 per 100 million miles. That is the lowest yearly toll in six years, with 36,355 people dying in 2019, and the yearly rate ranks second lowest in US history behind the 1.08 of 2014.

May and June Broke the Pattern

The monthly table shows how the savings ran out. January 2026 recorded 2,465 deaths against 2,690 a year earlier, a fall of 8.4%. February came in at 2,355 against 2,465, down 4.5%. March ended at 2,895 against 2,965, down 2.4%. April closed at 2,760 against 2,915, down 5.3%. Those four months together removed 560 deaths.

Then the direction flipped. In May, deaths reached 3,135 against 3,090, a rise of 1.5%, or 45 more people. June logged 3,140 against 3,050, a rise of 3.0%, or 90 more. The two months added 135 deaths, and that is the reason the six-month saving shrank from 560 to 425.

Mileage does not explain what happened in May. Traffic that month fell 0.7%, from 295.2 billion miles to 293.1 billion, yet deaths climbed, and the monthly rate moved from 1.05 to 1.07. In June, miles rose 0.9% to 289.4 billion and the rate went from 1.06 to 1.09. The second-quarter rate as a whole stayed flat at 1.05, the same as the second quarter of 2025, after the first quarter had dropped to 0.99 from 1.05.

Context makes the slowdown less alarming but still worth watching. The second quarter of 2025 had already fallen 10.4% from 2024, so 2026 was measured against a low bar. NHTSA’s quarterly chart marks the stretch from the second quarter of 2022 through the second quarter of 2026 as 17 quarters of declines against the matching quarter a year before. The latest quarter extended that run by just 0.2%. The third quarter of 2025 logged 10,055 deaths, and the nine-month update due in late December will show whether July through September beat it.

Which States Went Up and Which Went Down

NHTSA projects lower death counts in 35 states and Puerto Rico, and higher counts in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Eight of NHTSA’s 10 regions are down.

The biggest percentage falls are Hawaii, down 32.4% from 68 deaths to 46, and West Virginia, down 27.8% from 133 to 96. Alaska fell 20.7% (29 to 23), Illinois 20.4% (569 to 453), Kansas 17.4% (190 to 157), New Hampshire 17.2% (58 to 48), Nevada 16.5% (200 to 167) and Idaho 16.4% (122 to 102). In raw numbers, Illinois removed the most deaths at 116, followed by Tennessee (50 fewer, 493 to 443), Arizona (44 fewer, 562 to 518), Michigan (43 fewer, 475 to 432) and Oklahoma (42 fewer, 342 to 300).

The 15 states that went the wrong way are Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming. Georgia lost the most additional lives, 60 (598 to 658, up 10.0%), ahead of Pennsylvania with 57 (445 to 502, up 12.8%), Kentucky with 52 (285 to 337, up 18.2%), North Carolina with 50 (696 to 746, up 7.2%) and Ohio with 37 (486 to 523, up 7.6%). California, the biggest state, rose 1.8% from 1,792 to 1,825. Texas barely moved, from 1,856 to 1,851, a fall of 0.3%, and Florida dropped 2.4% from 1,474 to 1,439. The District of Columbia went from 7 deaths to 16.

Kentucky is the sharpest case on risk per mile. Its rate climbed from 1.20 to 1.40 deaths per 100 million miles, fourth highest in the country: only New Mexico (1.47), Mississippi (1.43) and Arizona (1.42) post higher rates. Georgia and Pennsylvania each moved from under 1.00 to 1.08. At the other end, Massachusetts records the lowest rate at 0.47, with Rhode Island at 0.58 and Utah at 0.59.

Read the small numbers with care. NHTSA does not run a separate projection for each state. Each state receives a share of its region’s projection, based on the latest state proportions in the Early Notification data, so every state in a region shares the same assumed adjustment. A jump of 28.3% in Delaware is 13 deaths (46 to 59), and Rhode Island’s 22.2% is four (18 to 22). North Dakota’s 25.0% is nine, and Vermont’s 13.0% is three. NHTSA says the state figures will change slightly as FARS counts and state mileage estimates are finalized.

Why Deaths Are Falling and Where the Danger Remains

The current numbers sit a long way below the pandemic spike. Deaths jumped 10.8% in 2021 to 43,230, the highest single-year toll in 16 years, and the first half of 2021 alone counted 20,055. The first half of 2026 is 3,305 deaths lower, a cut of 16.5%. The full-year projection for 2025 is 6,590 below the 2021 total, a 15.2% decline. If 2026 finishes at this pace, it will be the fifth year in a row of lower totals.

Safety experts tied the spike to behavior on emptier roads. Some motorists believed police were less likely to write tickets, and riskier driving followed. Some drivers also got behind the wheel impaired by alcohol or drugs they used at home. The US fatality rate climbed much higher than the rates of other developed nations in that period.

Not every group is improving. Bicyclist deaths rose 4% to 1,148 in 2025, after 2023 set the highest bicyclist toll in more than four decades. NHTSA has also added a pedestrian protection check to its ratings, covered in NHTSA’s 2027 crash test picks.

The cost is large. NHTSA’s 2023 cost study put the direct bill from crashes at $30 billion for taxpayers and $340 billion for society as a whole. Add quality-of-life valuations and the total reaches $1.37 trillion.

On the response side, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directed NHTSA in 2026 to launch the Pathways to Safer Streets (P2SS) action plan, which the agency calls the most extensive traffic safety effort in its history. Under it, NHTSA is working with law enforcement agencies nationwide on high-visibility traffic enforcement meant to catch dangerous drivers. The agency has also stepped up support for prehospital blood transfusion programs, which let emergency medical crews give blood before a crash victim reaches the hospital. NHTSA cites research showing the practice lowers deaths among trauma patients with severe bleeding by 37%.

What Drivers Can Do and What Comes Next

The two causes Morrison names, reckless driving and impaired driving, are the ones a driver controls. Keep to the posted limit, put the phone down, belt every passenger on every trip and hand the keys to a sober driver. Enforcement is moving the same way. A growing number of states are ending warning-only grace periods and fining handheld phone use, as we explained in states ending hands-free grace periods.

For impaired driving, the second cause on Morrison’s list, NHTSA runs a yearly Drive Sober crackdown that puts extra patrols on the road around Labor Day.

To see how your own state compares, open Table 3 of report DOT HS 813 875 on the NHTSA Crash Stats site. It lists the estimated deaths and the rate per 100 million miles for each state in the first halves of 2025 and 2026. Residents of Georgia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania will find rates above those of a year ago, and NHTSA says it is backing high-visibility enforcement with law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Watch for the next update. NHTSA releases projections for the first nine months of 2026 in late December. Those figures will show whether the May and June rise was a blip or the start of a reversal. The agency will then fold in the FARS annual file for 2025 and revise this half-year number up or down. Until then, 16,750 is the best available estimate, and the direction of travel after April is the part to track.

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Sources

• NHTSA: First Half 2026 Traffic Deaths Hit Near-Record Low
• NHTSA: Early Estimates of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities and Fatality Rate for the First Half of 2026 (DOT HS 813 875)
• Reuters: US traffic deaths fall in first half of 2026, lowest rate since 2014

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar