State Traffic Records Integration — Revised Edition

The United States recorded 39,254 motor-vehicle traffic fatalities in 2024 — confirmed by NHTSA’s final data release on April 1, 2026 — a 3.6 percent decline from the 40,901 recorded in 2023. Preliminary 2025 estimates project roughly 36,640 fatalities, the second-lowest rate in recorded history at 1.10 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

This revised edition incorporates the latest data, corrects the baseline data-source characterization, updates the institutional context to the current DOT administration (including the July 2025 SAFE ROADS initiative and first full-year grant approvals exceeding $800 million), and reaffirms the case for a national data-integration architecture across state safety-data systems.

• 2024 fatalities fell to 39,254 (−3.6% from 2023); preliminary 2025 projects roughly 36,640 (−6.7%).
• Fatalities remain about 6% above 2019 and 21% above 2011 despite recent improvement.
• The SAFE ROADS initiative and more than $800M in Section 402/405 grants create the fiscal basis to invest in data infrastructure.
• The integrated data infrastructure the national safety mission requires is still absent.
• The revised edition sustains the common-data-model and national-data-fabric recommendation with updated evidence.