[Analysis] Speed-Related Crashes Across the United States

Speeding is one of the most dangerous factors in any car crash. Some of the effects of elevated speed are very straightforward; faster speeds give drivers smaller windows of reaction time in which to avoid a collision, and they amplify the force of a collision, increasing the risk of serious injury or death for people both in and out of the car.

However, there are less obvious risks as well, including a reduction in the effectiveness of road safety features like guardrails and bridge abutments.

To better understand where speeding is a common factor in crashes, we analyzed data from nearly 40,000 fatal car crashes across the U.S. in 2022 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database. Here’s what we found:

KEY FINDINGS

• Speed was a contributing factor in 1 out of every 3.6 U.S. fatal crashes in 2022.
• Texas and California both have more than twice as many fatal crashes involving speeding as any other state, but the highest fatality rates that involve speed are in lower-population states with fewer overall crashes: Rhode Island, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.
• Of the top 10 counties with the largest rises in fatal speeding crashes from 2021 to 2022, four are in Texas.

Everything is bigger in Texas …

… including the number of fatal crashes in which speeding was determined to be a contributing factor. No state saw more fatal speeding crashes in 2022 than the Lone Star State’s 1,371. California was second with 1,269, while no other state had more than North Carolina’s 598. But smaller states with smaller numbers of overall crashes tend to fluctuate more when you look at statistics that come in the form of rates, which is why the list of the five largest statewide percentages of fatal crashes that involve speeding includes Rhode Island, Wyoming, Washington D.C., and Hawaii.

Three states were in the top 10 of both total fatal speeding crashes and percentage of fatal crashes involving speeding: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Texas had the 13th highest percentage, at 34.6%. In all, just under 28% — 1 in 3.6 — of fatal crashes across the U.S. involved speeding in 2022.

Which States Have the Biggest Issues with Speed-Related Fatal Crashes?

We compared and ranked the states using four different factors – the total number of fatal crashes in 2021 and 2022, the percentage of total crashes that involve excess speed, and the increase in speed-related fatal crashes.

Based on this analysis, North Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Oregon are the five most dangerous states for deadly car crashes involving speed. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and Louisiana are the five safest states.

The table below is interactive, click the heading to sort each column to find out how each state stacks up for each metric.

*Ranking was determined by creating a composite score based on a states ranking for each individual metric.

Which counties have the most fatal crashes involving speeding?

At the county level, most fatal speeding crashes are in counties with major population centers, where lots of people are on the roads every day. Los Angeles County, California, and Maricopa County, Arizona, were the only two localities in the U.S. with over 200 deadly speeding crashes in 2022, and the rest of the top 25 includes the counties that contain several major cities.

Chicago, San Diego, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City (Missouri), Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlotte are all represented, as are five Texas cities: Houston (Harris County), Dallas (Dallas), Fort Worth (Tarrant), San Antonio (Bexar), and Austin (Travis).

Of the 50 counties with the largest numbers of fatal speeding crashes, California’s Alameda County had the highest percentage of its fatal crashes that involved speed, at 48%.

Several Texas counties saw significant growth in fatal crashes involving speeding from 2021 to 2022.

Looking at crash data for jurisdictions that had at least 5 fatal speed-related crashes in 2021, there were 20 counties that saw fatal speeding crashes double in 2022. Four Texas counties, separate from the ones with the largest crash totals — Midland, Galveston, Wichita, and Cameron — were among the top 10 growers, with at least 129% more such fatal collisions in 2022 than in 2021.

Data sources and methodology

Crash data comes from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a database of all U.S. fatal motor vehicle collisions maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The most recent available data, covering all fatal crashes in 2022, was released to the public in April 2022.

We used fields containing crash IDs and variables related to speeding to link separate tables of data on crashes, vehicles, and people in order to identify patterns among crashes where speed is determined to be a contributing factor. Additional information on speeding-related crashes comes from the National Safety Council.

Please feel free to use the data from this analysis elsewhere, but if you do, we ask that you link back to this page and credit Shaw Cowart for attribution purposes.