Research · 19-city analysis · FARS 2018-2024
Vision Zero Report Card 2026
Truck-involved fatalities across 19 major US cities, 2018 through 2024. Of 17 cities that adopted Vision Zero, 10 cut truck deaths and 7 saw them rise. Adoption alone doesn't predict outcomes.
Key findings
- National truck-involved fatalities rose 6.7% from 5,027 in 2018 to 5,362 in 2024 (all US fatal crashes with at least one medium/heavy truck involved).
- 11 of 19 cities cut truck-involved deaths from their 2018-2019 baseline to 2023-2024 average. 8 saw them rise.
- Vision Zero adoption was not predictive. Of 17 cities with formal Vision Zero commitments, 10 improved and 7 did not. The strongest gains came from a mix of VZ adopters (Portland, Austin, Chicago, Boston) and non-adopters (Jacksonville).
- New York City — the first major US Vision Zero adopter (2014) — saw truck deaths rise +13.1% over the same period, despite over a decade of street-redesign and freight-routing initiatives.
- Largest improvements: Miami (-50.0%), Atlanta (-50.0%), Portland (-40.0%).
- Largest setbacks: Seattle (+200.0%), Philadelphia (+100.0%), Los Angeles (+38.2%) — though Seattle and Philadelphia trade in single-digit annual counts where percentage swings are noisy.
Full ranking — 19 cities, baseline vs recent
Baseline = average annual truck-involved fatalities, 2018-2019. Recent = average, 2023-2024. Each row links to the directory page for that city. Click any column header to sort.
| # | City | VZ year | Baseline avg | Recent avg | Change | Per 100k (recent) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miami | 2017 | 6.0 | 3.0 | -50.0% | 0.68 |
| 2 | Atlanta | 2020 | 7.0 | 3.5 | -50.0% | 0.70 |
| 3 | Portland | 2015 | 5.0 | 3.0 | -40.0% | 0.46 |
| 4 | Austin | 2016 | 8.5 | 5.5 | -35.3% | 0.57 |
| 5 | Washington DC small-N | 2015 | 1.5 | 1.0 | -33.3% | 0.15 |
| 6 | San Diego | 2015 | 8.0 | 6.0 | -25.0% | 0.43 |
| 7 | Chicago | 2012 | 12.0 | 9.5 | -20.8% | 0.35 |
| 8 | Boston small-N | 2015 | 2.5 | 2.0 | -20.0% | 0.30 |
| 9 | Jacksonville | — | 13.0 | 11.5 | -11.5% | 1.21 |
| 10 | San Antonio | 2015 | 15.5 | 14.5 | -6.5% | 1.01 |
| 11 | Nashville | 2017 | 8.5 | 8.0 | -5.9% | 1.16 |
| 12 | New York City | 2014 | 30.5 | 34.5 | +13.1% | 0.39 |
| 13 | Dallas | 2019 | 18.5 | 23.0 | +24.3% | 1.76 |
| 14 | Phoenix | 2017 | 15.5 | 19.5 | +25.8% | 1.21 |
| 15 | Denver | 2017 | 5.0 | 6.5 | +30.0% | 0.91 |
| 16 | Houston | — | 18.5 | 25.5 | +37.8% | 1.11 |
| 17 | Los Angeles | 2015 | 17.0 | 23.5 | +38.2% | 0.60 |
| 18 | Philadelphia | 2017 | 4.5 | 9.0 | +100.0% | 0.56 |
| 19 | Seattle small-N | 2015 | 1.5 | 4.5 | +200.0% | 0.61 |
Year-by-year by city
Raw counts of truck-involved fatalities per year. Sparkline column shows the 7-year trend; red dot if 2024 ended above the 7-year mean, green dot if below.
| City | Trend | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 7-yr total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami | 8 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 31 | |
| Atlanta | 1 | 13 | 4 | 9 | 11 | 5 | 2 | 45 | |
| Portland | 4 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 28 | |
| Austin | 8 | 9 | 15 | 18 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 72 | |
| Washington DC | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 12 | |
| San Diego | 6 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 52 | |
| Chicago | 10 | 14 | 13 | 21 | 14 | 11 | 8 | 91 | |
| Boston | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 17 | |
| Jacksonville | 16 | 10 | 18 | 20 | 7 | 12 | 11 | 94 | |
| San Antonio | 18 | 13 | 11 | 17 | 18 | 17 | 12 | 106 | |
| Nashville | 8 | 9 | 12 | 19 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 72 | |
| New York City | 22 | 39 | 29 | 26 | 44 | 36 | 33 | 229 | |
| Dallas | 16 | 21 | 20 | 22 | 31 | 21 | 25 | 156 | |
| Phoenix | 13 | 18 | 13 | 21 | 30 | 19 | 20 | 134 | |
| Denver | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 36 | |
| Houston | 16 | 21 | 26 | 23 | 29 | 26 | 25 | 166 | |
| Los Angeles | 17 | 17 | 14 | 17 | 17 | 28 | 19 | 129 | |
| Philadelphia | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 40 | |
| Seattle | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 21 | |
| National (all states) | — | 5,027 | 5,051 | 4,996 | 5,889 | 5,996 | 5,489 | 5,362 | 37,810 |
Important caveats
- Small annual counts are noisy. Cities with single-digit annual fatalities (DC, Boston, Miami, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia) can show large percentage swings from one or two crashes. Treat their rankings as suggestive, not definitive. Cities flagged small-N in the table above had a baseline or recent average below 3.
- City boundaries vary. FARS uses the federal FIPS city code on each fatal crash. Crashes on highways at the city limits sometimes attribute to the surrounding county instead, so true urban truck-deaths are likely undercounted for cities with major interstate-through-routes.
- Vision Zero is not a single policy. Each city's adoption looks different — protected bike lanes, freight-route bans, lower default speed limits, automated enforcement. The adoption year marks the political commitment, not a uniform intervention.
- Truck definition. "Truck-involved" here means medium/heavy commercial trucks (FARS body-type codes 60-69). Passenger pickup trucks under 10,000 lbs gross weight are excluded.
- FARS 2024 is preliminary. The 2024 Annual Report File released April 2026 will be re-released as the Final File in 2027 and may revise slightly.
Methodology
Source data: NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) National CSV downloads for years 2018 through 2024. FARS is a complete federal census of US fatal traffic crashes, with one row per crash and supplementary tables for vehicles, persons, and events.
For each crash year we joined the
accident.csv
table (per-crash attributes including state, city FIPS code, and total
fatalities) with the
vehicle.csv
table (per-vehicle body type), restricted to crashes with at least one
vehicle whose BODY_TYP is in the range 60–69 (medium/heavy
trucks per FARS coding), then summed FATALS per city per
year. The two CSVs above link to NHTSA's official 2024 National
downloads — each year (2018–2024) ships in its own zip on the
NHTSA file-downloads page.
City coverage was chosen to span the largest US metros plus the original Vision Zero adopters (NYC 2014, Chicago 2012, San Francisco 2014, Boston 2015, LA 2015, Portland 2015, Seattle 2015, DC 2015, San Antonio 2015, San Diego 2015) and post-2015 adopters (Austin 2016, Phoenix 2017, Denver 2017, Miami 2017, Nashville 2017, Philadelphia 2017, Dallas 2019, Atlanta 2020). Houston and Jacksonville are included as large-metro non-adopters for comparison.
Baseline period = mean of 2018 and 2019 annual counts (two pre-pandemic years). Recent period = mean of 2023 and 2024. Percentage change is (recent − baseline) / baseline × 100. Per-capita rates use 2020 Decennial Census city populations as denominators.
Full source code (analysis script, raw downloads referenced) is available on request. The full per-city dataset is published below under CC BY 4.0.
Cite this report
AccidentLawyerReview Editorial. Vision Zero Report Card 2026: Truck
Deaths in 19 Major US Cities. Published 27 May 2026.
https://accidentlawyerreview.com/research/vision-zero-report-card/
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20487070
Dataset also available with permanent DOI on Zenodo, mirrored on HuggingFace, source on GitHub. Build notes and the bugs along the way are written up on dev.to; the urban-policy framing is on Medium; and a separate take on getting a DOI for indie data projects is on Hashnode.
Download the data
Free for republication under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Journalists: for custom city slices, supplementary breakdowns (single-unit vs combination trucks, pedestrian victim trucks, rural vs urban routes), or methodology questions — email editorial@accidentlawyerreview.com.
AccidentLawyerReview is an independent public-data directory of US personal-injury law firms. This report is part of our Crash Atlas research series. We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice.