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Data · Truck crashes

Truck and bus crashes, county by county

How many crashes involving a commercial truck or bus happen in each county, how many kill or injure someone, and how that has moved over ten years. We count them from the crash reports that states send to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, once per crash, and check every county against the state totals and the national fatal-crash census.

Checked October 28, 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Not legal advice

What is in this dataset?

Crashes involving a commercial truck or bus that states reported to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), counted from its Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) crash file for every county, state and territory and the US over the last ten complete calendar years. Each record gives, for the latest year, the crashes, the fatal crashes, the crashes with injuries, the crashes where a vehicle was towed away, the crashes involving a bus, the deaths and the injuries, with the whole ten-year history and the ten-year totals. A crash is one state crash report, counted once however many trucks and buses it involved, and its deaths and injuries are counted once. State records add the number of active carriers based in the state, from the FMCSA Company Census File. Counties with no reported crash are listed with zeros, and reports without a usable county code are kept in a 'county not given' row for their state, so counties always add up to the state.

Use it to size the truck-accident market in the counties a firm serves: how many truck and bus crashes happen there each year, how many are fatal or cause injuries, and whether the count is rising. Look up a state to get every county in it, compare up to ten states, or search for a county by name. It counts only federally reportable crashes, and some states report more completely than others, so read it alongside the fatal-crash census from NHTSA.

Records
3,255
Look up by
57
state or territory
Primary source
3,255

The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.

Where does the data come from?

The MCMIS Crash File on data.transportation.gov (dataset aayw-vxb3) is aggregated on the server with SoQL: for each calendar year, state and county code, the number of distinct crash reports (all, with a death, with an injury, with a tow-away, with a bus) and the sum of deaths and injuries, corrected so a crash with several vehicle rows counts its deaths and injuries once and a report that names two counties counts once. No crash row, VIN, plate, carrier or driver field is ever fetched. The county is the crash state's FIPS code plus the report's county code, checked against the Probative crosswalks. Separate state-level and whole-file queries are the totals gate, NHTSA FARS large-truck fatal crashes the second source.

Period covered
January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2025
Places
The whole US, states and counties
How often we refresh it
Every month
Records read
October 28, 2026

Official sources

The sources the records cite most

What does a record look like?

  • United States: 165,292 truck and bus crashes reported to FMCSA in 2025 (4,114 fatal, 61,854 with injuries, 153,268 with a vehicle towed away; 14,354 involving a bus), with 4,579 deaths and 86,273 injuries. 2016 to 2025: 1,740,118 crashes in all. Federally reportable crashes only (MCMIS crash file as of 2026-10-28; late reports can still be added).

    Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: FMCSA MCMIS Crash File (data.transportation.gov)

  • Texas: 18,918 truck and bus crashes reported to FMCSA in 2025 (526 fatal, 8,367 with injuries, 16,509 with a vehicle towed away; 1,185 involving a bus), with 587 deaths and 11,653 injuries. 2016 to 2025: 195,700 crashes in all. Federally reportable crashes only (MCMIS crash file as of 2026-10-28; late reports can still be added).

    Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: FMCSA MCMIS Crash File (data.transportation.gov)

  • California: 11,112 truck and bus crashes reported to FMCSA in 2025 (298 fatal, 4,262 with injuries, 10,522 with a vehicle towed away; 871 involving a bus), with 331 deaths and 5,528 injuries. 2016 to 2025: 130,535 crashes in all. Federally reportable crashes only (MCMIS crash file as of 2026-10-28; late reports can still be added).

    Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: FMCSA MCMIS Crash File (data.transportation.gov)

  • Georgia: 9,297 truck and bus crashes reported to FMCSA in 2025 (164 fatal, 3,355 with injuries, 8,737 with a vehicle towed away; 594 involving a bus), with 193 deaths and 4,475 injuries. 2016 to 2025: 69,958 crashes in all. Federally reportable crashes only (MCMIS crash file as of 2026-10-28; late reports can still be added).

    Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: FMCSA MCMIS Crash File (data.transportation.gov)

The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.

What each of the 19 main columns means
jurisdiction
Two-letter code of the state or territory the crash happened in, or US
level
county, county-not-given (reports in the state without a usable county code), state, state-not-given (reports without a U.S. state code) or us
county
5-digit county FIPS code (the crash state's code plus the report's county code); a few are former codes still used by state reports (Connecticut's old counties); empty for other levels
countyName
County name as the Census Bureau writes it
stateName
State or territory name
year
The latest complete calendar year in the record (the others are under `years` in the JSON)
value
Crashes in that year (same as crashes)
crashes
Federally reportable crashes involving at least one truck or bus, counted once per state crash report
fatal_crashes
Crashes in which someone died
injury_crashes
Crashes in which someone was injured
towaway_crashes
Crashes in which a vehicle was towed away because of damage
bus_crashes
Crashes involving at least one bus
deaths
People killed in those crashes (anyone: truck or bus occupants, other drivers, pedestrians), counted once per crash
injuries
People injured in those crashes, counted once per crash
crashes_10y
Crashes over the ten years in `years`
deaths_10y
Deaths over the ten years in `years`
active_carriers
State and US records: active FMCSA-registered carriers with at least one power unit whose main address is in the state (Company Census File, current); not where their trucks crash
interstate_carriers
Of those, carriers registered for interstate operation
years
{year: [crashes, fatal_crashes, injury_crashes, towaway_crashes, bus_crashes, deaths, injuries]} for each of the ten years (order in yearFields)

How do I use it in my own tools?

truckcrashes_lookup
For one two-letter state or territory code, or US: truck and bus crashes reported to FMCSA in the latest complete year for the state and every county in it, with fatal crashes, injury crashes, tow-away crashes, bus crashes, deaths, injuries and the ten-year history.
truckcrashes_compare
Truck and bus crash records for up to 10 states or territories (two-letter codes) or US side by side, with every county's crashes, deaths and injuries and the ten-year history.
truckcrashes_search
Truck and bus crash records whose text matches the words given, such as a county name ("Harris County"), a state name or a 5-digit county FIPS code.

How to cite this dataset

You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.

Version
1.0.0, released October 28, 2026
Every version
10.5281/zenodo.23743676 (always points to the newest)
License
CC BY 4.0

Download the data

Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.

Suggested citation

Probative. (2026). Truck and bus crashes by county, state and year (FMCSA crash file) (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23743677

Credit line for a chart, table or article

Source: Probative, Truck and bus crashes by county, state and year (FMCSA crash file), version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23743677, licensed CC BY 4.0.

Add to a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)

Not legal advice. These are counts of crash reports kept for research and marketing planning. A reported crash says nothing about who was at fault, and the counts leave out crashes that did not meet the federal reporting threshold. Rights and deadlines after a crash are for your own counsel.

What changed recently?

  • 2026-10-28 · FMCSA truck and bus crashes, fatal and injury crashes, deaths and injuries by county, state and US, 2016 to 2025, from the MCMIS crash file. (source)

The full log is in changes.json.

What are the limits?

  • Only federally reportable crashes are counted: a crash with a death, with an injured person taken away for medical treatment, or with a vehicle towed away because of damage. Minor crashes that a state reports for its own purposes are left out.
  • The file depends on what each state uploads. Some states report late or leave crashes out, and FMCSA grades every state's crash data for completeness, timeliness and accuracy. A low county count can mean weak reporting rather than safe roads.
  • A crash counts here if a commercial truck or bus was in it, whoever caused it. The counts say nothing about fault, and deaths and injuries include everyone hurt in the crash, not only the truck or bus occupants.
  • Crashes are placed by the county code on the state report. Reports without a usable code stay in the state's 'county not given' row, so the state total is complete even where the county split is not. Puerto Rico and the other territories have no county rows.
  • The source is a live file: states can still add or correct reports for recent months, so the latest year can rise slightly after we read it. We re-read the whole history every month and log any change to a published figure.
  • The carrier counts on state records show where carriers keep their main address, not where their trucks drive or crash.
  • Records older than 45 days since their last check are marked stale in the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the data corrections log.

Found a wrong value? Report an error with the record id and the source that shows the right value.

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