Skip to main content
AccidentLawyerReview is an independent editorial publication. We are not a law firm.

Crash Atlas · Los Angeles County · Data study

Where Big Rigs Kill in LA County

Ten years of truck-involved fatal and severe-injury collisions mapped by corridor, intersection, and city — 2015 through 2024.

Key findings

  • 617 people killed in truck-involved collisions in LA County between 2015 and 2024, across 1,926 fatal or severe-injury crashes. Severe injuries totalled 1,567.
  • Vision Zero is going the wrong direction for trucks. LA adopted Vision Zero in August 2015 with a target of zero traffic deaths by 2025. Truck-involved deaths went from 54 in 2015 to 57 in 2024 — that's ↑ 5.6% in nine years.
  • I-5 (Golden State) is the deadliest corridor, not I-710 as commonly assumed. The I-5 segment through LA County recorded 209 KSI collisions and 69 deaths — three times more than I-710. The Golden State carries through-freight for the entire West Coast, not just LA port traffic.
  • Peak crash hour is 2 AM, not the port-shift turnover. Of 1,926 KSI collisions with known times, 110 happened at hour 2. The pattern points to driver fatigue and overnight visibility, not commute-time congestion. The 4-7 AM port-shift window holds only 12.3% of crashes — about average across the day.
  • 116 pedestrians and 23 bicyclists were killed by trucks in the ten-year window. Pedestrian victims had a median age of 47 — working-age adults, not the stereotypical child-darts-into-traffic scenario.

Truck crash map

1,896 geocoded crash locations (98.4% of all KSI collisions). Toggle severity and adjust the year range to filter. Click any point for date, location, and victim details.

Severity
Years
2015 2024

/ crashes

Static downloads: points.csv · points.json

Year-over-year, with Vision Zero baseline

Vision Zero was adopted in August 2015. The target was zero traffic deaths county-wide by 2025. The 2024 number is preliminary and will revise once SWITRS finalises the year.

Year Fatal crashes Severe-injury crashes People killed Pedestrians killed Bicyclists killed
2015 49 83 54 12 1
2016 61 113 70 9 4
2017 46 123 50 11 3
2018 52 145 58 11 2
2019 57 149 66 16 4
2020 55 129 57 11 3
2021 56 183 64 7 1
2022 63 152 66 13 2
2023 69 131 75 15 2
2024* 55 155 57 11 1

* 2024 figures are preliminary per SWITRS; final reconciliation 12-18 months after year-end.

Top corridors — state highways with the most truck KSI crashes

State highways only. Local-street KSI crashes total 898 across LA County surface streets and are visible on the map above.

Corridor KSI crashes Deaths Severe injuries
I-5 (Golden State) 209 69 176
I-210 / SR-210 (Foothill) 98 38 73
SR-60 (Pomona Fwy) 92 26 74
Route nan 79 17 75
I-10 (Santa Monica / San Bernardino) 58 30 41
I-405 (San Diego) 56 16 47
Route 138.0 55 25 42
US-101 (Hollywood / Ventura) 53 24 42
I-710 (Long Beach Fwy) 53 13 50
I-605 (San Gabriel River) 51 18 35
Route 14.0 41 12 33
SR-91 (Artesia / Riverside) 40 12 33
Route 1.0 25 4 22
I-110 / SR-110 (Harbor / Pasadena) 25 6 21
I-105 (Glenn Anderson) 19 8 16

By hour of day

The 2 AM and 1 PM peaks point at driver-fatigue (overnight) and midday delivery-window patterns respectively, not the often-assumed 4-7 AM port-shift turnover. The 4-7 AM window accounts for 12.3% of KSI crashes — about average for any three-hour block.

Hour (24h)KSI crashes
00:0084
01:00103
02:00110
03:0084
04:0083
05:0085
06:0069
07:0080
08:0091
09:0082
10:0087
11:0087
12:0086
13:00106
14:0085
15:0084
16:0062
17:0067
18:0063
19:0058
20:0050
21:0066
22:0079
23:0069
25:006

By city / jurisdiction within LA County

Jurisdiction KSI crashes Deaths Pedestrian deaths
LOS ANGELES 609 178 48
UNINCORPORATED 444 151 18
LONG BEACH 124 29 7
CARSON 43 18 7
DIAMOND BAR 37 10 1
POMONA 35 9 3
PASADENA 32 11 1
PALMDALE 30 17 2
SANTA FE SPRINGS 30 13 1
SANTA CLARITA 30 10 0
COMMERCE 27 10 3
IRWINDALE 27 8 0
COMPTON 27 6 1
BALDWIN PARK 21 5 1
INDUSTRY 20 1 0

What kind of trucks, and who was hit

Truck type (party-level)

From SWITRS party records on KSI crashes. A single crash can include multiple truck parties; rows below count parties, not crashes.

Vehicle typeParties
Truck/tractor w/ trailer1,127
Truck or truck tractor (big rig)927
Pickup/panel truck220
Other bus13
Pickup w/ trailer3

Pedestrian victims killed, by age

116 pedestrians killed by trucks 2015-2024. 114 had a valid age recorded; SWITRS uses code 998 for unknown ages, which we exclude here.

Age groupKilled
Working age (35-54)38
Young adult (18-34)30
Pre-senior (55-64)22
Senior (65+)19
Child (0-17)5

Methodology

  • Data source: California Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), accessed via the UC Berkeley Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) on 2026-05-25. tims.berkeley.edu.
  • Jurisdiction: Los Angeles County, California (all CHP beats, LAPD divisions, and incorporated/unincorporated areas within the county).
  • Date range: 2015-01-01 through 2024-12-31. The 2024 figures are preliminary per SWITRS; the final reconciliation typically lands 12-18 months after year-end. We will refresh this study when SWITRS publishes the final 2024 numbers.
  • Truck-involved definition: we use the SWITRS TRUCK_ACCIDENT flag at the collision level. This includes collisions with at least one large-truck party — primarily big-rig tractors (with or without trailer), but also includes some pickup-with-trailer combinations. The party-level breakdown above shows the actual distribution.
  • Severity filter: we restrict the headline numbers to "KSI" — Killed or Severely Injured — by including only collisions with COLLISION_SEVERITY ∈ {1, 2}. SWITRS severity codes 3 (Visible Injury) and 4 (Complaint of Pain) are known to be inconsistently reported and are excluded here. We also pulled the lower severities and they total 16,954 additional collisions over the same period; these are not on the map or in the charts above.
  • Geocoding: we use the POINT_X (longitude) and POINT_Y (latitude) columns supplied by TIMS, which apply consistent geocoding to SWITRS records. 98.4% of KSI records carried valid coordinates. One point that fell outside the LA County bounding box (lat 33.3-34.85, lon -119.5 -117.5) was excluded as a geocoding error.
  • Victim age: SWITRS uses the sentinel value 998 to represent unknown ages. We exclude 998 from age statistics. Of 116 pedestrians killed by trucks, 114 have a valid age recorded.
  • Reproducibility: the cleaning and aggregation script is published alongside the data download below. Anyone with TIMS access can re-derive these numbers from the same source.

Cite this report

Republish freely under CC BY 4.0. Link back to this page so readers can verify and follow updates.

https://accidentlawyerreview.com/research/crash-atlas/california/los-angeles/

For custom data slices on deadline — a specific corridor, ZIP, time window, or victim demographic — email research@accidentlawyerreview.com. We can usually return a custom CSV within 24 hours.

Download the data

Data licensed under CC BY 4.0. Republish freely; attribution requested as above.

Update log

  • 2026-05-25 — Initial publication.
  • Q3 2026 (planned) — refresh with finalised 2024 SWITRS data + preliminary 2025.

AccidentLawyerReview is an independent public-data directory of US personal-injury law firms. We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice. This study aggregates publicly available crash data and is offered for journalists, researchers, and the public; it does not interpret any specific legal claim.