US road deaths per mile, by named route (2019–2023)
NHTSA FARS deaths on each numbered route, divided by that
route’s length in the state from Census TIGER. 800 routes, pooled
over 5 years.
Per mile, not per road. By raw count the deadliest US
roads are simply the longest busy ones. Dividing by length reorders the list
completely — short urban arterials rise, long interstates fall. Both
orderings are shown below so the difference is visible.
Per mile is still not per vehicle-mile. It removes the
“long roads have more crashes” effect but not the “busy roads
have more crashes” one: a rural two-lane at 0.5 deaths/mile is genuinely
worse than an interstate at 0.5 carrying twenty times the traffic, and this
measure cannot separate them. AADT would; it is not currently obtainable.
Coverage: 75,111 deaths were not on a parseable numbered route
(local streets, unnamed roads) and 15,017 were on a route with no TIGER
geometry. Neither appears on this map, so it under-counts rather than
mis-attributes.