Who Actually Dies in Large Truck Crashes

In 2024, 85.3% of people killed in tractor-trailer crashes were not in the truck. A state-by-state analysis of federal crash data.

Key findings

Large trucks are dangerous, but not mainly to the people driving them. In 2024, 3,664 people died in crashes involving a Class 8 vehicle, the weight class that covers tractor-trailers and semis. 3,124 of them, or 85.3%, were not in the truck.

  • 2,120 were drivers of another vehicle.
  • 577 were passengers in another vehicle.
  • 348 were pedestrians.
  • 45 were cyclists.
  • Only 540 were occupants of the truck itself.

The pattern is stable year to year. In 2023 the same figure was 84.5% (3,253 of 3,850 deaths), so this is not a one-year anomaly.

Where the gap is widest

The share holds across states with very different road networks, traffic volumes and industries. It is above 80% almost everywhere the sample is large enough to measure.

Share of large-truck crash deaths where the victim was not in the truck, by state A grid map of the United States. Each state is a tile shaded by the percentage of deaths in Class 8 truck crashes in 2024 where the person killed was not an occupant of the truck. Darker tiles are higher shares. States with fewer than twenty such deaths are left unshaded because a share from so small a base is not reliable. The full figures are in the table below. Alaska: 10 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareAK Maine: 16 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareME Vermont: 2 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareVT New Hampshire: 3 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareNH Washington: 90.2% of 51 deaths were not truck occupantsWA90 Idaho: 92.1% of 38 deaths were not truck occupantsID92 Montana: 81.0% of 21 deaths were not truck occupantsMT81 North Dakota: 81.8% of 22 deaths were not truck occupantsND82 Minnesota: 91.2% of 57 deaths were not truck occupantsMN91 Illinois: 83.6% of 122 deaths were not truck occupantsIL84 Wisconsin: 89.6% of 67 deaths were not truck occupantsWI90 Michigan: 90.5% of 74 deaths were not truck occupantsMI90 New York: 90.5% of 74 deaths were not truck occupantsNY90 Oregon: 89.3% of 56 deaths were not truck occupantsOR89 Nevada: 93.9% of 33 deaths were not truck occupantsNV94 Wyoming: 16 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareWY South Dakota: 19 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareSD Iowa: 70.7% of 41 deaths were not truck occupantsIA71 Indiana: 84.9% of 106 deaths were not truck occupantsIN85 Ohio: 81.4% of 129 deaths were not truck occupantsOH81 Pennsylvania: 86.8% of 121 deaths were not truck occupantsPA87 New Jersey: 86.5% of 52 deaths were not truck occupantsNJ86 Connecticut: 16 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareCT Rhode Island: 3 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareRI California: 94.0% of 248 deaths were not truck occupantsCA94 Utah: 85.0% of 40 deaths were not truck occupantsUT85 Colorado: 86.8% of 68 deaths were not truck occupantsCO87 Nebraska: 81.6% of 49 deaths were not truck occupantsNE82 Missouri: 88.1% of 118 deaths were not truck occupantsMO88 Kentucky: 79.6% of 54 deaths were not truck occupantsKY80 West Virginia: 77.3% of 22 deaths were not truck occupantsWV77 Virginia: 75.7% of 70 deaths were not truck occupantsVA76 Maryland: 77.8% of 45 deaths were not truck occupantsMD78 Delaware: 8 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareDE Arizona: 80.2% of 106 deaths were not truck occupantsAZ80 New Mexico: 70.0% of 60 deaths were not truck occupantsNM70 Kansas: 95.2% of 42 deaths were not truck occupantsKS95 Arkansas: 71.4% of 77 deaths were not truck occupantsAR71 Tennessee: 88.2% of 127 deaths were not truck occupantsTN88 North Carolina: 81.7% of 115 deaths were not truck occupantsNC82 South Carolina: 85.7% of 91 deaths were not truck occupantsSC86 District of Columbia: 1 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareDC Oklahoma: 84.3% of 89 deaths were not truck occupantsOK84 Louisiana: 83.1% of 59 deaths were not truck occupantsLA83 Mississippi: 71.2% of 80 deaths were not truck occupantsMS71 Alabama: 78.6% of 98 deaths were not truck occupantsAL79 Georgia: 91.0% of 134 deaths were not truck occupantsGA91 Hawaii: 2 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareHI Texas: 84.9% of 478 deaths were not truck occupantsTX85 Florida: 90.9% of 220 deaths were not truck occupantsFL91 Massachusetts: 14 deaths, too few to show a reliable shareMA Share of deaths where the victim was not in the truck 0-69% 70-79% 80-86% 87-91% 92-100% fewer than 20 deaths — too few for a reliable share
Share of deaths in Class 8 truck crashes where the person killed was not in the truck, 2024. States with fewer than 20 such deaths are unshaded, because a percentage from so small a base is not reliable. Source: NHTSA FARS 2024, analysed by Cash4Crashes.

California is the highest in the country at 94.0% among states with meaningful volume, followed by Georgia at 91.0% and Florida at 90.9%. Texas carries the largest absolute toll, with 406 of its 478 deaths falling outside the truck.

Two findings that contradict the assumption

Most fatal large-truck crashes happen in daylight, not at night. The five deadliest hours in 2024 were noon (199 crashes), 2pm (192), 7am (185), 1pm (176) and 3pm (162).

Fatal large-truck crashes by hour of day, 2024 A bar chart of fatal crashes involving a Class 8 vehicle in 2024 by hour of day. The tallest bars fall in the middle of the day, peaking at noon, not overnight. 00:00 — 98 fatal crashes 00 01:00 — 100 fatal crashes 02:00 — 128 fatal crashes 03:00 — 105 fatal crashes 03 04:00 — 117 fatal crashes 05:00 — 141 fatal crashes 06:00 — 158 fatal crashes 06 07:00 — 185 fatal crashes 08:00 — 144 fatal crashes 09:00 — 160 fatal crashes 09 10:00 — 156 fatal crashes 11:00 — 159 fatal crashes 12:00 — 199 fatal crashes 199 12 13:00 — 176 fatal crashes 14:00 — 192 fatal crashes 15:00 — 162 fatal crashes 15 16:00 — 141 fatal crashes 17:00 — 131 fatal crashes 18:00 — 107 fatal crashes 18 19:00 — 83 fatal crashes 20:00 — 91 fatal crashes 21:00 — 95 fatal crashes 21 22:00 — 122 fatal crashes 23:00 — 115 fatal crashes Hour of day (24-hour clock) — bar height is the number of fatal crashes 199 0
Fatal crashes involving a Class 8 vehicle by hour of day, 2024. The peak is the middle of the day, not the small hours. Source: NHTSA FARS 2024, analysed by Cash4Crashes.

The image of the exhausted driver at three in the morning does not match where the deaths actually cluster. Fatigue still matters, and hours-of-service rules exist for good reason, but the mid-afternoon dip is well documented in sleep research and a driver who started before dawn is deep into their day by lunchtime.

They are also more rural than urban. Of the 3,267 fatal Class 8 crashes in 2024, 1,858 happened on rural roads and 1,392 in urban areas. Rural roads carry less traffic but higher speeds, more undivided two-lane highways, and longer emergency response times.

State by state

States with 20 or more deaths in Class-8 truck crashes, 2024. Source: NHTSA FARS 2024.
StateTotal deathsNot in the truckShare
Texas47840684.9%
California24823394.0%
Florida22020090.9%
Georgia13412291.0%
Tennessee12711288.2%
Ohio12910581.4%
Pennsylvania12110586.8%
Missouri11810488.1%
Illinois12210283.6%
North Carolina1159481.7%
Indiana1069084.9%
Arizona1068580.2%
South Carolina917885.7%
Alabama987778.6%
Oklahoma897584.3%
Michigan746790.5%
New York746790.5%
Wisconsin676089.6%
Colorado685986.8%
Mississippi805771.2%
Arkansas775571.4%
Virginia705375.7%
Minnesota575291.2%
Oregon565089.3%
Louisiana594983.1%
Washington514690.2%
New Jersey524586.5%
Kentucky544379.6%
New Mexico604270.0%
Kansas424095.2%
Nebraska494081.6%
Idaho383592.1%
Maryland453577.8%
Utah403485.0%
Nevada333193.9%
Iowa412970.7%
North Dakota221881.8%
Montana211781.0%
West Virginia221777.3%

Method

Source: the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) 2024 national file, a census of every fatal motor-vehicle crash on US public roads. The 2024 file records 36,297 fatal crashes in total.

Large trucks are identified using the vehicle GVWR rating in the FARS vehicle file. Class 8 covers 33,001 lbs and above, the class containing tractor-trailers and semis. Crashes are matched to people using the combination of case number and state, because case numbers are not unique across states. A death is counted as "not in the truck" when the person's vehicle number does not match any Class 8 vehicle in that same crash; pedestrians and cyclists are included in that group.

The analysis counts deaths in crashes involving a Class 8 vehicle. It does not assign fault, which FARS does not record. Nothing here should be read as a claim about which driver caused any crash.

In the map, states with fewer than 20 such deaths are left unshaded. Several small states show a 100% share from a base of two or three deaths, which is sampling noise rather than a finding, and publishing it as a shaded result would invite it to be quoted as one.

The script that produces these figures is published with the study so the analysis can be reproduced.

Download and reuse

The state-level aggregate is available as a CSV: truck-crash-victims-2024.csv.

These findings are free to republish, including the charts, the table and the figures, with attribution to Cash4Crashes and a link to this page. For questions about the method, or for a breakdown of a specific state or metro area, contact help@cash4crashes.com.

If you were hurt in a crash involving a commercial truck, our guide to commercial truck accident claims covers what these numbers mean for a claim.

Cash4Crashes is a lead-generation service that connects people injured in crashes with attorneys in our network. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.

Cite this study

Copy the citation below, or link directly to this page. These findings are free to republish with attribution.

Cash4Crashes. (2026). Who Actually Dies in Large Truck Crashes. Analysis of NHTSA FARS 2024. https://cash4crashes.com/research/truck-crash-victims

Reproduce or embed these charts

Attribution required when reproducing any chart or figure from this study:

Source: Cash4Crashes analysis of NHTSA FARS 2024, https://cash4crashes.com/research/truck-crash-victims

The underlying data is available as a download: truck-crash-victims-2024.csv. The raw federal dataset is published by NHTSA FARS and is in the public domain.

Frequently Asked

Common Questions

Clear answers to help you feel confident about next steps.

It is a mismatch of mass. A loaded tractor-trailer can weigh 20 to 30 times what a passenger car weighs, and in a collision that difference is absorbed overwhelmingly by the smaller vehicle. The truck cab is also higher, heavier, and structurally reinforced in ways a passenger car is not. The result is that the occupants of the other vehicle, along with any pedestrians or cyclists involved, bear most of the fatal risk. This is a statement about physics and outcomes, not about fault: FARS does not record who caused a crash, and this analysis does not assign blame to truck drivers.

No, and the data cannot answer that question. FARS records what happened and who was hurt, not who was at fault. A passenger car merging unsafely in front of a truck and a truck following too closely produce the same entry in this dataset. What the data does show is who ends up dying when the two collide, which is a separate question from who is responsible. Fault in any individual crash is determined by investigation of that crash, not by national statistics.

We use the vehicle GVWR rating recorded in FARS and count Class 8 vehicles, meaning a gross vehicle weight rating of 33,001 lbs and above. This is the weight class that contains tractor-trailers and semis. It deliberately excludes lighter commercial vehicles such as delivery vans and box trucks in Classes 1 through 7, so the figures here describe the heaviest vehicles on the road rather than commercial traffic in general.

States with fewer than 20 deaths in Class 8 crashes are shown unshaded. In several small states the recorded share is 100%, but that figure comes from a base of two or three deaths, where a single crash moves the percentage enormously. Publishing those as shaded results would present sampling noise as a finding. Their underlying counts are still included in the downloadable CSV so nothing is hidden.

Yes. The findings, the charts, the table and the downloadable CSV are free to republish with attribution to Cash4Crashes and a link to this page. The underlying FARS data is a public federal dataset and is not owned by us. If you need a cut we have not published, such as a specific state, county, or metro area, or an earlier year for comparison, email help@cash4crashes.com and we will run it.

NHTSA publishes FARS annually, and we refresh this analysis when a new year becomes available. The current edition uses the 2024 national file and was last updated on 29 July 2026. The 2023 comparison figure quoted above comes from the 2023 national file processed with the identical script, which is why the two years can be compared directly.

Ready to Get Help?

Connect with an experienced accident attorney today. Free consultation, no obligation.

' . config('adventum_form.seo.organization.display_phone') . '
Start Free Case Review
Call Now Free Review