Louisville Car Accident Statistics: 10 Years of Crash Deaths and Serious Injuries (2016–2026)

Numbers in this report are for Louisville Metro (Jefferson County), including small cities such as Shively, St. Matthews and Jeffersontown. Unless a table says otherwise, five-year figures cover 2021 through 2025.

Deaths climbed from 77 in 2018 to a peak of 136 in 2023, then fell two years in a row. Serious injuries have trended down over the 10 years, from 673 in 2016 to 404 in 2025.

Year to date. From January through August, 83 people were killed in 2024, 65 in 2025 and 67 in 2026. Serious injuries in those months went from 326 (2024) to 250 (2025) to 310 (2026). Recent months are preliminary and usually rise as reports are finalized.

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates.

Pedestrians

Pedestrians are a small share of travel but a large share of deaths. From 2021 to 2025, 170 pedestrians were killed and 347 were seriously injured. Pedestrian deaths reached a ten-year high of 44 in 2024. By year from 2016: 2016: 24, 2017: 30, 2018: 24, 2019: 29, 2020: 35, 2021: 29, 2022: 35, 2023: 33, 2024: 44, 2025: 29.

83% of pedestrian deaths (141 of 170) happened in dark conditions, lighted or unlighted. Older adults are hit hard: 35 of the pedestrians killed were 65 or older.

Motorcyclists, bicyclists and scooter riders

Motorcyclists were 16% of the people killed (97) even though motorcycles are a small fraction of vehicles. Bicyclists accounted for 20 deaths and 71 serious injuries, and moped and scooter riders for 17 deaths and 75 serious injuries. Motorcycle deaths by year since 2016: 2016: 18, 2017: 23, 2018: 11, 2019: 17, 2020: 15, 2021: 16, 2022: 21, 2023: 20, 2024: 18, 2025: 22.

For more on these riders’ rights, see our guides for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists.

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates.

Surface roads (not interstates)

The ten roads at the top of this list accounted for 792 of the 2,973 people killed or seriously injured across Louisville (27%). Dixie Highway alone accounted for 216 people, more than twice the next road. Long roads naturally have more crashes, so these totals show where harm is concentrated, not a per-mile risk rate.

Interstates in Louisville Metro

Louisville’s High Injury Network. The city’s own analysis found that 152 miles of roadway, just 5% of Louisville’s non-interstate miles, accounted for 1,213 fatal and serious injury crashes, or 55% of the non-interstate total, in 2018–2022 (Vision Zero Louisville High Injury Network methodology, January 2024).

Road guides: Dixie Highway, Preston Highway, Watterson Expressway (I-264), Gene Snyder (I-265), I-65 and I-64.

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates. Road names are standardized from the crash location fields; Gene Snyder Freeway is combined with I-265.

We grouped crash locations that fell within about 250 feet (75 meters) of each other and ranked the clusters by the number of fatal or serious-injury crashes, then by people killed. Three of the ten hot spots are on West Broadway.

See our guide to intersection crashes in Kentucky and the most dangerous roads in Louisville.

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates. Crash coordinates are as recorded on police reports; a few crashes may be placed imprecisely.

Evening and night are the deadliest. Crashes that killed or seriously injured someone peaked at 5 p.m. (184 crashes). Fatal crashes were most common at 10 p.m. (46). From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., 1,448 of the 2,639 serious crashes happened (55%), but 400 of the 604 deaths (66%).

Weekends are worst. Saturday had the most crashes with a death or serious injury (431), and Sunday had the most fatal crashes (98), followed by Friday (93). By month, August had the most serious crashes over the five years (286) and January the fewest (165).

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates. Times are local.

Darkness. 369 of the 604 people killed from 2021 to 2025 (61%) died in crashes in dark conditions, lighted or not. For pedestrians the share was 83%.

Hit-and-run. 90 people were killed in hit-and-run crashes from 2021 to 2025, and 63 of them were pedestrians. In total, 378 people were killed or seriously injured by a driver who left the scene. Federal data tells the same story: 108 of the 594 fatal crashes in Jefferson County from 2020 to 2024 (18%) were hit-and-runs.

If a driver who fled hurt you, your own uninsured motorist coverage may help. See what to do after a hit-and-run and our uninsured motorist page.

Source: Louisville Metro Public Works, Vision Zero Louisville: Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries (built from Kentucky State Police crash reports), data through Aug. 31, 2026, downloaded Oct. 17, 2026. Analysis by Forman & Associates. Source: NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 2020–2023 Final File and 2024 Annual Report File, Jefferson County, Kentucky. Analysis by Forman & Associates.

The Vision Zero dataset doesn’t record driver behavior consistently, so this section uses NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the national census of fatal crashes. These figures cover fatal crashes only in Jefferson County.

• Alcohol: in at least 133 fatal crashes (22%), a driver tested at .08 or higher. This is a minimum because not every driver is tested.
• Speeding: 141 fatal crashes (24%) were speeding-related.
• Distraction: police reported driver distraction in 58 fatal crashes (10%). NHTSA notes that distraction is likely underreported because it is hard to establish after a crash.
• Seat belts: of the 313 passenger-vehicle occupants killed whose belt use was known, 177 (57%) were not buckled up.
• Helmets: 65 of the 105 motorcyclists killed (62%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Large trucks were involved in 52 fatal crashes (9%).

A driver who chose to drink, speed or text can be held responsible for the harm. See our pages on truck crashes and car crashes.

Source: NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 2020–2023 Final File and 2024 Annual Report File, Jefferson County, Kentucky. Analysis by Forman & Associates. Annual Report File data for 2024 may change slightly when NHTSA releases the Final File.

You may see slightly different Louisville totals elsewhere. For 2023 and 2024, the Vision Zero data counts 136 and 114 people killed. NHTSA’s FARS and the Kentucky State Police’s annual Collision Facts report both count 134 and 113 for Jefferson County.

• Vision Zero data lists each person killed or seriously injured, using the injury severity coded on the police report. It can include crashes in parking lots and on private property.
• FARS counts deaths within 30 days of a crash on a public road.
• KSP Collision Facts (2024 report) counts collisions and people on public roads and adds totals for all injuries, not just serious ones. Our Kentucky car crash statistics page has those statewide and Jefferson County totals.

We don’t mix sources within a table. Each table names its source.

1. Louisville Metro Public Works, Traffic Fatalities and Suspected Serious Injuries by Mode and Severity (Louisville Open Data, updated monthly; data through Aug. 31, 2026; downloaded Oct. 17, 2026). One record per person killed (K) or with a suspected serious injury (A), based on Kentucky State Police crash reports. Part of Vision Zero Louisville. We used the year, time, mode, light condition, hit-and-run flag, road name and coordinates. We did not use or publish any names or other personal details.
2. NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 2020–2023 Final File and 2024 Annual Report File (national data files), filtered to Kentucky (state 21), Jefferson County (county 111).
3. Louisville Metro Government, High Injury Network Methodology (January 2024), 2018–2022 data.
4. Kentucky State Police and Kentucky Transportation Center, 2024 Kentucky Traffic Collision Facts, used for comparison.

How we counted. Years are by the local date of the crash. “People” counts each person killed or seriously injured. “Crashes” counts unique crash reports. Road totals use the main road named on the report; we standardized spellings (for example, “Dixie Hwy” and “Dixie Highway”). Intersection hot spots group crashes within about 250 feet. Percentages are rounded. Recent months are preliminary and may change as police reports are finalized.

What this report doesn’t cover. These datasets cover deaths and serious injuries. They don’t include the much larger number of crashes with minor injuries or property damage only. Totals are counts, not rates per mile driven or per resident.

Updates. We plan to refresh this report when Louisville Metro posts new monthly data and when NHTSA releases new FARS files.