“Trying to make too much of a single year's reduction can create this feeling of accomplishment when we're not quite there yet,” said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS. “We’ve got a long way to go to get to a point where we can truly say we've turned the corner.”
The bad: Even with a 6.7% year-over-year decline, more than 36,600 people died on U.S. roads in 2025, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The better: That decline returns the country nearly to 2019 levels, which Harkey said marks an “encouraging” milestone after a disastrous surge in dangerous driving behaviors and poor enforcement that began in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
Asked why the United States has finally returned to pre-pandemic road fatality levels, Harkey and other safety experts said credit should be shared among several parties in federal and local government, the auto industry, safety advocates and police agencies. He also said those groups will need to continue pushing to reach an IIHS goal of less than 30,000 deaths on U.S. roads annually by 2030.
“I think there's a collective realization that we all have to work together now,” said Harkey, whose organization is widely known for its rigorous crash testing, research and automotive safety awards.
He continued: "You see that 6.7% reduction number, and it looks big. But to get to under 30,000, well, that's going to require three more years of that number. We need three more consecutive years at that level of reduction to get us to our 30x30 vision, which is a 30% reduction from the high point (of deaths) back in 2022. So, that's a lot."
On a per-mile basis, it's worth noting, U.S. roads were close to the country's all-time best in death prevention last year.
There were 1.10 traffic fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled nationally in 2025, second only to 2014 (1.08 fatalities) in the more than 104-year history of recordkeeping. That rate was first measured at a grisly 24.1 in 1921 and dropped below 2.0 for the first time in 1991.
Still, road safety experts have bemoaned the United States' poor performance among peer nations and urged a catch-up. "Among 29 high-income countries, the U.S. has the highest crash fatality rate — more than twice the average of the other 28. There’s no excuse for the U.S. to lag so far behind," Harkey wrote last year when announcing the 30x30 goal.
Harkey said IIHS launched that goal in 2025 after acknowledging that the Vision Zero initiative — an effort launched in 2016 by the National Safety Council to end U.S. roadway deaths by 2050 — was moving "farther and farther out of reach" to the point of becoming "little more than a noble idea."
Five reasons road deaths are declining
As the United States collectively tries to catch up with peer nations, safety experts pointed to several reasons why U.S. road deaths have finally come back down to pre-pandemic levels. Deaths have also fallen, according to new detailed 2024 data, across the board for key subcategories on pedestrians, cyclists, urban areas, rural areas, drunken driving, young drivers and more. One of the top reasons was police enforcement.
(1) Police Enforcement
"Since COVID, generally speaking, law enforcement efforts have increased," said Cathy Chase, director of the lobbying group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, commonly known as Advocates.
She continued: "And that is a ripple effect. Not only are people getting pulled over when they're violating traffic safety laws, but the general public, by and large, becomes more aware of this, and they adjust their dangerous driving behaviors."
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Police enforcement on U.S. roads dropped precipitously during the peak of the pandemic, according to federal data. There were an estimated 18.67 million traffic stops in 2018 but only 12.45 million in 2022 — a roughly 33% decline. That was despite Americans driving relatively similar amounts overall in each year (3.24 trillion and 3.20 trillion total miles, respectively).
Chase and others said the decline was likely due to a confluence of policing factors, like attempts to limit in-person interactions early in the pandemic, staffing shortages and general pushback against police following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.
There is not yet comprehensive national data on traffic stops for the years since 2022, but safety officials — including members of the Trump administration — have emphasized increased enforcement.
(2) Traffic Up, Speeds Down
Another reason for the decline in roadway deaths has been an uptick in traffic. The total number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States reached about 3.28 trillion in 2024. That was the first time the country exceeded its pre-COVID level, per the Eno Center for Transportation.
Dramatic pandemic-era reductions in traffic meant people who continued driving could fly down streets and highways at unsafe speeds.
"What we saw during the pandemic — and NHTSA did a good job of studying this — was a significant increase in the number of speeders on the roadway, and very aggressive speeders in excess of 100 miles per hour. It wasn't unusual to see that documented throughout the country," said Harkey, of IIHS.
Speeding remains a "big problem," Harkey said, citing conversations with state police across the country. He and other safety experts have encouraged the rollout of policies targeting "super speeders" who greatly exceed posted limits.
Those policies include significantly higher fines for excessive speeding, which Maryland recently adopted, and the installation of Intelligent Speed Assistance devices that automatically limit speed in vehicles belonging to reckless drivers. Virginia, under a 2025 law that takes effect in July, will become the first state in the country to give judges the power to require such devices for drivers caught exceeding 100 mph.
(3) Infrastructure Improvements
While the Trump administration has hailed law enforcement for bringing traffic deaths down, the Biden administration previously emphasized the role of infrastructure spending in achieving "lifesaving" progress.
"Safety is at the core of our mission, and we are using funds from the Biden-Harris infrastructure package to deliver lifesaving resources to communities across the country so that roads become safer for everyone,” then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in September 2024.
Harkey said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which passed in 2021 during former President Joe Biden's administration and directed $550 billion in new spending, has helped states implement proven countermeasures to curb roadway dangers.
"Look at roundabouts, for example, which can reduce fatalities by 80% at an intersection. We're seeing those go in at a much more rapid rate in some states now," he said. "Another example is speed safety cameras. We've seen a huge uptick in the number of cameras being implemented across the country."
The landmark Biden-era spending package, notably, lifted a ban on states' ability to use federal funds for automated traffic enforcement.
(4) Safer Vehicles
Safety experts also credited the auto industry for the ongoing implementation of features that help protect drivers and passengers, such as automatic emergency braking (AEB), blind spot monitoring and improved seatbelt technology.
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"It's a very slow game, just in terms of how often the average American buys a new car," said Adam Snider, the top spokesperson for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which coordinates road safety advocacy across states. The average vehicle age on U.S. roads hit a record high of 12.8 years in 2025, per S&P Global Mobility.
"So it will take a while for the fleet to turn over and get this new tech into all the cars," Snider added. "But that's a key part of this."
Increasing the share of new vehicles on the road as a way to improve safety has been a stated aim of the Trump administration and its allies, including the Heritage Foundation. The conservative group laid out that case in its widely circulated Project 2025 policy document during President Donald Trump's most recent presidential campaign.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the auto industry's top lobbying group in Washington, D.C., was measured in its response to the latest NHTSA data on vehicle fatalities.
"NHTSA is out with new data that shows U.S. traffic deaths are decreasing. That’s good news. Still, there were nearly 37,000 fatalities last year — a shocking and tragic number, and one that’s not acceptable to anyone in the auto industry," the group said in a statement.
"While vehicles are safer and more advanced than ever, it’s important that NHTSA continues to educate the public on safe driving behavior, support nationwide enforcement of traffic laws, collect data on roadway crashes, and pursue a comprehensive ‘safe system approach,’ where all stakeholders work together to improve safety.”
One promising area of cutting-edge safety technology — autonomous vehicles and automatic driving systems — could eventually play a transformational role in significantly reducing roadway deaths. However, safety advocates said that would not happen until at least a decade into the future, given the slow pace of turnover in the U.S. vehicle fleet.
(5) More Data, Better Data
Snider also said advances in the collection and use of data from roads have helped state transportation departments study traffic safety both more effectively and more quickly.
"We're constantly trying to improve, using more data to identify dangerous driving hot spots and maybe potential areas of conflict between someone walking and the driver. We're trying to be a little more predictive and proactive, instead of reactive after there's been a tragedy, and putting in new signs or making other changes," Snider said.
"Or if 11 people hit their brakes in a hard manner, right at a very small stretch of road, that indicates there might be a pothole," he added.
At the dawn of the GPS age in the 2000s, companies like INRIX Inc. started using aggregated data from commercial and consumer vehicles to track traffic patterns on roads across the country. Though there are still significant privacy concerns over the collection and sale of such personal information — especially as smartphones have become prevalent — the use of traffic data services has become widespread throughout the country at federal and state agencies.
The Federal Highway Safety Administration, for example, has used INRIX as a data provider since 2017. Michigan inked its own deal with the company in 2018.
Michigan makes progress but lags regional peers
Even with those improvements, safety advocates are urging continued action at all levels of government.
At the federal level, Cathy Chase of Advocates called for implementation of stalled regulations on AEB and anti-drunken driving tech, passage of a proposed bill separating safety features from other luxury add-ons in vehicle purchasing, and protection of speed cameras from congressional ire.
At the state level, Chase pointed to her organization's annual Roadmap to Safety report, which grades states on their traffic safety policies related to occupant protection, child passenger safety, young drivers, impaired driving and more categories. Michigan was the only state east of the Mississippi River to earn an overall "danger" rating in the report, despite recording improvements in roadway fatalities for the past four years in a row.
Last year, per preliminary federal data, road deaths in Michigan dropped from 1,098 to 1,021 — a roughly 7% drop. The state remains safer on a per-mile-driven basis than the national average but worse than its regional peers.
Michigan had 1.02 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2025, tied for 17th best nationally. Nearby states Ohio and Indiana both ranked better than Michigan in roadway fatality rates last year at 0.98 and 0.91, respectively. The Advocates report shed some light on possible reasons Michigan is lagging.
The report specifically called out state lawmakers' 2012 decision to repeal its all-rider helmet law, which research suggests has caused an uptick in motorcycle crash deaths.
Advocates also pointed out other laws missing from Michigan's books, including a primary enforcement rear seat belt law (i.e. requiring rear seat riders of all ages to belt up) and complete cellphone restrictions (even on hands-free use) for youth drivers. The scorecard chided the state for not using speed cameras, though implementation of that technology is in progress after lawmakers in 2024 approved their use in construction zones.
The Office of Highway Safety Planning, Michigan's state traffic safety office, said it was "too soon" to comment on preliminary crash data for 2025. "We’re pleased that the crash numbers are down and look forward to sharing the final numbers for 2025," spokesperson Dennis Raymo said in an email, adding that he expects final numbers in late spring.
He also pointed to the state's ongoing SAFER by 2030 initiative, which — like the IIHS effort — aims to decrease roadway fatalities by 30% by 2030.
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