Every crash tells a story. When you analyze over 2.2 million crashes involving buses and motor carriers across more than four decades, those stories converge into clear trends—trends that can help us predict, prevent, and save lives.

This report breaks down key crash insights from 1982 through 2025, focusing on severity, weather conditions, geography, calendar trends (including holidays), and travel volume. Below are the top takeaways, supported by interactive visualizations and hard data.

Crash Severity: What Conditions Drive the Worst Outcomes?

Across nearly all environments, the majority of crashes involve no fatalities. But when fatalities occur, certain conditions stand out:

• Fog is the deadliest weather per crash, averaging 0.08 fatalities per incident.
• Crashes on dry roads in clear weather are most common, but they still account for the highest total fatalities simply due to volume.
• Hazmat-placarded vehicles and multi-vehicle crashes carry slightly elevated fatality rates, though they remain relatively rare.

Geographic Hotspots: Where Crashes Happen Most

Some states stand out for sheer volume:

These states reflect both population density and major freight corridors. New York (0.79) and North Carolina (0.70) had the highest average injuries per crash.

Conditions on the Road: Weather and Surface Matter

Crashes under normal conditions dominate in volume, but adverse conditions show subtle but important differences:

• Adverse weather accounts for 345,487 crashes but has lower fatality rates per crash (0.030) than clear conditions (0.037).
• Fatal crashes spike in rain on wet roads and fog on dry surfaces—a dangerous and often underestimated combo.

Top 3 weather × road combinations by fatalities:

1. No Adverse + Dry: 59,854 fatalities
2. Rain + Wet: 5,767 fatalities
3. Fog + Dry: 1,137 fatalities

When Crashes Occur: Time of Day, Week, and Year

Patterns emerge clearly across the calendar:

• Rush-hour crashes dominate, with a sharp spike between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
• Wednesdays see the most fatalities of any day (14,011).
• October is the deadliest month (7,545 fatalities), possibly due to changing daylight and weather patterns.
• The early 2020s mark the highest annual crash tallies on record—likely reflecting increased freight movement and post-COVID traffic rebounds.

Mileage-Normalized Risk: Are We Getting Safer or More Dangerous?

By merging monthly Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) with our crash data, we can see whether crashes and fatalities are simply tracking travel volume—or actually increasing per mile:

• Crash vs. VMT correlation is low (r≈0.16), meaning crash counts don’t rise in lockstep with miles driven.
• Crash rates per billion miles show a slight upward trend over the 30-year span (r≈0.17), indicating risk per mile is creeping up.
• Fatality and injury rates per billion miles have also inched upward, though more modestly (r≈0.04 for fatalities, ~0.02 for injuries).
• Multi-vehicle crash rate per billion miles has increased most sharply (r≈0.21), suggesting convoy or chain-reaction collisions are becoming more common relative to travel volume.
• Summer months (notably July / August) spike in both raw VMT and crash rates per mile, underscoring heightened risk during peak-travel seasons.

Holiday Danger Zones: Crashes and Fatalities Around Key Dates

Holidays remain high-risk windows, especially for fatal crashes. Within seven days of major U.S. holidays:

Labor Day and Memorial Day stand out for higher fatality rates per crash, reflecting heavy summer-travel congestion and fatigue risks.

Final Takeaways

• Clear & dry conditions produce the most crashes, but don’t lull us into complacency—risk per mile is ticking up across all conditions.
• Fog, rain, and multi-vehicle scenarios carry the highest per-mile fatality and injury rates.
• Peak travel seasons (summer, mid-week rush hours, and major holidays) amplify both crash volume and per-mile risk.
• Multi-vehicle incidents per mile are rising faster than overall crashes, calling for renewed focus on highway spacing, convoy protocols, and collision-avoidance systems.
• Despite growing travel volumes, roads are not getting safer at a rate commensurate with increases in miles driven.

As carriers, fleet managers, and safety regulators chart the next generation of road-safety interventions, these mileage-normalized insights highlight the areas—both seasonal and systemic—where targeted action can have the biggest impact.