Large Truck Crash Deaths by State, 2024
Crashes involving large trucks killed 5,340 people in the United States in 2024. Here is every state's count, how much of its traffic toll those crashes made up, and a CSV of the full table.
Crashes involving large trucks killed 5,340 people in the United States in 2024, down 2.5 percent from 5,478 in 20231. Seven in ten of the dead were people in other vehicles. Truck occupants made up 920 of the deaths, and 667 were pedestrians, cyclists and other people outside any vehicle1.
The share varies widely by state. By our calculation from NHTSA figures, large-truck crashes accounted for 13.6 percent of all 39,254 U.S. traffic deaths in 202413. In North Dakota the figure was 26.7 percent. In Hawaii it was 2.0 percent. The table below gives the count and the share for every state and the District of Columbia.
The numbers by state
The first column is everyone killed in crashes that involved a large truck, from NHTSA’s state fatality table1. The second divides that count by the state’s total traffic deaths for 20242. The third is NHTSA’s figure for large trucks as a share of all vehicles in the state’s fatal crashes1.
| State | Deaths in large-truck crashes | Share of state traffic deaths | Large trucks, share of vehicles in fatal crashes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 135 | 14.0% | 10.4% |
| Alaska | 10 | 14.3% | 9.6% |
| Arizona | 140 | 11.4% | 8.6% |
| Arkansas | 103 | 17.1% | 13.2% |
| California | 391 | 10.1% | 7.2% |
| Colorado | 105 | 15.2% | 9.6% |
| Connecticut | 33 | 10.6% | 7.2% |
| Delaware | 11 | 8.7% | 6.5% |
| District of Columbia | 1 | 2.1% | 1.6% |
| Florida | 353 | 11.2% | 7.4% |
| Georgia | 197 | 14.0% | 9.5% |
| Hawaii | 2 | 2.0% | 1.5% |
| Idaho | 46 | 19.3% | 14.4% |
| Illinois | 148 | 12.6% | 8.6% |
| Indiana | 145 | 17.4% | 11.4% |
| Iowa | 58 | 16.3% | 12.2% |
| Kansas | 66 | 19.5% | 12.4% |
| Kentucky | 86 | 12.2% | 8.6% |
| Louisiana | 94 | 12.5% | 8.8% |
| Maine | 29 | 16.4% | 10.9% |
| Maryland | 64 | 11.1% | 7.3% |
| Massachusetts | 31 | 8.5% | 5.8% |
| Michigan | 112 | 10.2% | 6.7% |
| Minnesota | 81 | 17.0% | 11.0% |
| Mississippi | 103 | 13.7% | 9.9% |
| Missouri | 144 | 15.1% | 10.4% |
| Montana | 31 | 15.0% | 11.7% |
| Nebraska | 61 | 24.3% | 16.6% |
| Nevada | 43 | 10.3% | 6.5% |
| New Hampshire | 13 | 9.8% | 6.2% |
| New Jersey | 69 | 10.3% | 7.0% |
| New Mexico | 84 | 20.5% | 15.4% |
| New York | 117 | 10.6% | 7.9% |
| North Carolina | 205 | 12.7% | 8.3% |
| North Dakota | 24 | 26.7% | 18.1% |
| Ohio | 174 | 15.0% | 10.2% |
| Oklahoma | 114 | 17.7% | 11.3% |
| Oregon | 83 | 15.4% | 9.7% |
| Pennsylvania | 167 | 14.8% | 9.7% |
| Rhode Island | 5 | 9.6% | 6.5% |
| South Carolina | 139 | 13.4% | 9.2% |
| South Dakota | 32 | 21.9% | 16.9% |
| Tennessee | 171 | 14.3% | 9.7% |
| Texas | 720 | 17.3% | 11.6% |
| Utah | 49 | 17.7% | 11.2% |
| Vermont | 4 | 6.8% | 6.0% |
| Virginia | 122 | 13.3% | 9.8% |
| Washington | 74 | 10.1% | 6.7% |
| West Virginia | 40 | 15.6% | 10.9% |
| Wisconsin | 89 | 15.0% | 8.9% |
| Wyoming | 22 | 20.6% | 15.8% |
| U.S. total | 5,340 | 13.6% | 9.3% |
Sources: NHTSA, Large Trucks: 2024 Data, Tables 6 and 71; state traffic deaths from NHTSA’s 2024 state table2. The share column is BTT Road & Legal’s calculation from those two tables. Download the full table as a CSV, which adds the breakdown by person type and the vehicle counts behind the third column.
Where the counts are highest
Texas recorded 720 deaths in large-truck crashes, 13.5 percent of the national total and nearly as many as California (391) and Florida (353) combined1. North Carolina (205) and Georgia (197) came next. All five rank among the ten most populous states, so high raw counts are expected.
Texas also led in every person-type column. It had the most truck occupants killed (136), the most occupants of other vehicles killed (511) and the most nonoccupants killed (73)1.
Where trucks make up the biggest share
Ranked by share, the list changes. Five states saw more than one in five traffic deaths come from crashes involving a large truck:
| State | Share of traffic deaths | Deaths in large-truck crashes |
|---|---|---|
| North Dakota | 26.7% | 24 |
| Nebraska | 24.3% | 61 |
| South Dakota | 21.9% | 32 |
| Wyoming | 20.6% | 22 |
| New Mexico | 20.5% | 84 |
All five are thinly populated states. Their totals are small, so a handful of crashes moves the share several points from one year to the next. NHTSA’s own measure points the same way: North Dakota had the highest share of large trucks among vehicles in fatal crashes, at 18.1 percent, and 20 states were at 10 percent or more1.
At the other end, Hawaii (2.0 percent), the District of Columbia (2.1 percent), Vermont (6.8 percent) and Massachusetts (8.5 percent) had the smallest shares.
Who dies in these crashes
Most of the people killed were outside the truck. Nationally in 20241:
| Person killed | Number | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Occupants of other vehicles | 3,753 | 70% |
| Large-truck occupants | 920 | 17% |
| Nonoccupants (pedestrians, cyclists, others) | 667 | 12% |
| Total | 5,340 | 100% |
Truck occupants were more likely to die in single-vehicle crashes (560) than in multivehicle crashes (360)1.
How to read the table
Counts are not risk. A state with more people, more roads and more freight will have more deaths. The share of traffic deaths controls for the size of a state’s overall crash toll but not for how many trucks run there or how far they travel. NHTSA’s state tables give no truck mileage by state, so this page does not compute deaths per mile driven.
“Involving” is not “caused by.” FARS counts every death in a crash with a large truck in it, whoever was at fault. The national research on why these crashes happen, and why its figures are often misquoted, is in leading causes of large truck crashes.
2024 is not final. NHTSA publishes each year’s data first as an Annual Report File and revises it about a year later as the Final File. The 2023 large-truck total moved from 5,472 to 5,478 in that step1. Expect small changes to 2024 state counts.
The vehicle definition changed in 2020. Starting with 2020 data, NHTSA classifies vehicles using manufacturer body-class data, so 2020 and later counts by vehicle type do not line up with 2019 and earlier ones1. Compare multiyear trends only within the 2020 and later series.
Other systems count differently. FMCSA’s crash file, MCMIS, counts large trucks and buses in commercial use, including any vehicle built to carry nine or more people and any vehicle carrying placarded hazardous materials5. State crash databases use their own definitions of a commercial vehicle. The same state and year can produce three different death counts. Our field guide to U.S. crash data sets out how the systems differ.
Methods
The death counts and the vehicle shares are NHTSA’s published figures from Tables 6 and 7 of Large Trucks: 2024 Data1. State traffic death totals come from NHTSA’s 2024 state table2; they sum to the national total of 39,2543. BTT Road & Legal computed each state’s share by dividing its large-truck crash deaths by its total traffic deaths and rounding to one decimal place. Puerto Rico appears in NHTSA’s tables but not in the U.S. total, and it is left out here.
FARS holds data on every fatal motor vehicle traffic crash in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico14.
License and citation. The CSV and the share calculations are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Cite as: BTT Road & Legal, “Large Truck Crash Deaths by State, 2024,” November 12, 2026, https://bttlaw.com/research/large-truck-crash-deaths-by-state/. For the underlying counts, cite NHTSA, Large Trucks: 2024 Data (DOT HS 813 816).
