National

Pedestrian Accident Statistics

Pedestrian deaths in the United States rose for two decades. Overall traffic deaths leveled off in that time. Our record counts 4,763 pedestrian deaths in 2000. The count climbed 59% to a peak of 7,593 in 2022. It eased to 7,080 in 2024. Nearly seven in ten of those deaths happen after dark.

Both findings below come from the same national count that powers the state ranking further down this page. That count covers every pedestrian killed in a traffic crash. It is broken out by year and by the lighting at the time. Neither number needs an estimate or a model. Both are straight counts from the record. That is part of why the 2000-to-2022 rise is worth taking seriously. It isn't a projection. It's what happened. 2024 had 366 days. Spread 7,080 deaths across them, and one person is killed while walking about every 74 minutes. Nationwide, for the entire year.

Are pedestrian deaths rising in the US?

Yes, over the long run, even as overall US traffic deaths haven't moved the same way. Pedestrian deaths climbed 59% from 2000 to their 2022 peak. They went from 4,763 to 7,593. That pulled apart from the broader traffic-death trend. The count eased back to 7,080 in 2024. That's still 49% above the 2000 count. Pedestrians are the one road-user group in this data whose toll hasn't come near its early-2000s level again.

Do most pedestrian deaths happen at night?

Yes. Sixty-nine percent of pedestrian deaths happen in the dark, against 23% in daylight. That comes from 136,509 people killed while walking, 2000 through 2024. The rest fall at dawn, at dusk, or in unknown lighting. The data only tells us where deaths pile up, not why. But the gap is huge: about three deaths after dark for every one in daylight. It is one of the starkest splits in the entire national record.

What counts as a pedestrian death here

The count above covers people struck and killed while on foot in a traffic crash. That includes a sidewalk, a crosswalk, a shoulder, or a travel lane. It doesn't include cyclists, who get their own count and their own ranking. It doesn't include people who died in a vehicle. The day-versus-night split comes from the same records. It uses the lighting police reported at the scene: full daylight, dark, dawn, dusk, or unknown. We checked the state totals on this page against the separate national yearly count. They match exactly for every year from 2019 through 2024. So the state ranking below and the national numbers above tell the same story, not two different ones.

injured.org tracks a simple ladder of protection across its vehicle pillars. Pedestrians sit at one end: no protective shell at all. A motorcyclist has partial gear. A large truck outweighs almost everything it hits. That ladder is part of why pedestrian deaths get their own page here. They never disappear into a single all-vehicle total.

Want a deeper look at how these crashes go unresolved? Read The Vanishing Driver, our flagship study of hit-and-run accountability.