Our N.C. Crash Facts Report

Each year, the NCDOT releases its data regarding motor vehicle crashes, injuries, and fatalities from the prior year.

It truly is a mountain of data, and they do an excellent job compiling and publishing it. What’s always missing, for us, is the human context.

We work with people who have been injured each day, dealing with the  aftermath of crashes that injure or kill our North Carolina neighbors. Data is incredibly valuable, but at the same time, it reduces all that pain and tragedy to statistics. There’s so much information that, sometimes, the human cost — and the useful trends and things we can do to change them — get lost in a sea of numbers.

That shouldn’t happen. Our team has looked through the numbers and tried to tease out the most important statistics, trends, and revelations from the NCDOT’s findings.

It is our hope that this book will highlight critical facts that point to problem areas. After all, we want to see fewer people injured and killed on our roads. We also want this data to be easily understood so that journalists, public servants, and educators can put it to good use.

This data is truly eye-opening. For example, our report shows:

• Crashes and injuries on the road dropped in 2020, but fatalities surged dramatically.

• Just 5% of North Carolina counties accounted for 24% of road fatalities.

• Despite explosive population growth in North Carolina over the past 20 years, alcohol-related crashes have actually declined over that period.
  
  But that decline has stopped in recent years.

We hope you find the information throughout this report enlightening and useful and that you stay safe on North Carolina’s roads.