What is in this file
One row per state, plus DC and Puerto Rico where available. The rank universe is 50 states; reference rows have an empty rank. The file is sorted by descending value with reference jurisdictions after the states.
- Period
- 2023
- Release
- 2026-04-01
- Updated
- 2026-10-23
- Producer
- NHTSA and FHWA
- Source
- FARS 2023 final file and Highway Statistics table VM-2 · FARS 2023 / VM-2 2023
- Units
- Deaths per 100 million vehicle miles
- Cadence
- Annual; FARS final files follow the data year by about two years
Quick validation snapshot
Mississippi has the highest estimate (1.79 per 100M miles); Massachusetts has the lowest (0.56 per 100M miles). The U.S. benchmark is 1.26 per 100M miles. These are useful checks when importing the CSV into a spreadsheet. Reference jurisdictions may lie outside the 50-state range, so exclude rows marked reference when reproducing the default state ranks.
FARS is a census of fatal crashes, so the death counts have no sampling error. FHWA does not publish margins of error for vehicle miles, which states estimate from traffic counts.
Calculation and reproducibility
100 × FARS deaths (sum of FATALS in the 2023 final accident file, by crash state; reproduced by scripts/research-fars.py) / annual vehicle miles in millions (VM-2, total of all roads). Reproduces NHTSA’s national rate of 1.26.
Immutable edition 2026-10-23 CSV · Full edition registry, including available histories
Column definitions
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| rank | 1 + the number of states with a higher source value; empty for reference rows. |
| jurisdiction | State name or labeled reference jurisdiction. |
| value | Numeric estimate, using the source’s available precision. |
| unit | Deaths per 100 million vehicle miles |
| moe_90 | Published 90% margin of error in the same units; empty when not published. |
| reference | True if excluded from the default 50-state ranking. |
| period | Reference period of the observation. |
| release | Date of the source release. |
| source | Producer and table/file identifier. |
| source_url | Producer file or source documentation; microdata rows link to the specific state input ZIP. |
Limits and reuse
Deaths are counted where the crash happened, not where the driver lives. Rates reflect roads and speeds, rural driving, seat belt use, impairment and emergency care, as well as driver behavior.
This is an independent arrangement of federal statistical data. Cite the named producer for the original observations and Rank the States for computed ranks. Downloading or embedding does not imply government endorsement. Source files are archived with a checksum for reproducibility.
SHA-256 of the concatenated FARS ZIP and VM-2 workbook SHA-256 strings. SHA-256: bb26e04b4363882f4bd7e954bb18077c992660ca6db604185cb98a54a6a45c2e
Citation
Rank the States. Traffic death rate, 2023. Source: NHTSA and FHWA, FARS 2023 final file and Highway Statistics table VM-2, FARS 2023 / VM-2 2023; released 2026-04-01. Edition 2026-10-23. https://rankthestates.com/data/editions/2026-10-23/traffic-death-rate.csv