Every year, ADOT publishes a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdown of crashes across Arizona. Most people never look at it. We do, because the numbers behind every one of those rows are someone’s worst day.
We pulled six years of ADOT Crash Facts data for Phoenix, 2019 through 2024, to see what’s actually changed on our roads. The headline isn’t what you’d expect. Total crashes are down from where they were before the pandemic. Deaths aren’t.
The Six-Year Car Accident Statistics Picture
Here’s the year-by-year breakdown we pulled straight from ADOT’s Crash Facts reports for Phoenix, covering total crashes, fatal crashes, deaths, and the alcohol-related slice of each.
| Year | Total Crashes | Fatal Crashes | People Killed | Alcohol-Related Crashes | Alcohol-Related Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 45,208 | 193 | 202 | 1,303 | 60 |
| 2020 | 35,274 | 207 | 220 | 1,189 | 33 |
| 2021 | 40,833 | 278 | 294 | 1,429 | 49 |
| 2022 | 38,331 | 282 | 301 | 1,297 | 51 |
| 2023 | 36,927 | 298 | 307 | 1,354 | 109 |
| 2024 | 37,472 | 265 | 278 | 1,351 | 95 |
A few numbers jump out immediately:
- Most total crashes: 2019 (45,208) — also the year with the fewest deaths.
- Fewest total crashes: 2020 (35,274) — pandemic-depressed traffic.
- Worst year for deaths: 2023 (307 killed, 298 fatal crashes) — the peak of the entire dataset.
- Most alcohol-related deaths: 2023 (109) — more than double every year except 2024.
Fewer wrecks, deadlier ones
In 2019, Phoenix logged the most crashes of any year in our dataset and the fewest deaths. By 2023, crash volume had dropped 18%, to 36,927. Deaths, meanwhile, had climbed 52%, to 307. Run the math, and the trend gets sharper:
| Year | Fatality Rate |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 0.45% |
| 2020 | 0.62% |
| 2021 | 0.72% |
| 2022 | 0.79% |
| 2023 | 0.83% |
| 2024 | 0.74% |
The fatality rate nearly doubled from 2019 to 2023. A Phoenix crash today is meaningfully more likely to kill someone than a crash was five years ago, even though there are fewer crashes overall.
That pattern isn’t unique to Phoenix. ADOT and NHTSA have both pointed to lower traffic volume during and after the pandemic, correlating with higher average speeds, which tends to make the crashes that do happen more severe. It’s a trend, not a fixed rule, and every crash still comes down to its own facts, but the data points in a consistent direction across all six years.
2024: A Step Back From The Brink
There’s a genuine bright spot: 2024 improved, with fatal crashes down to 265 and deaths down to 278. That’s consistent with ADOT’s statewide report that Arizona traffic fatalities declined for a second straight year in 2024. Encouraging, but Phoenix’s 2024 numbers are still well above where they sat in 2019 and 2020.
Broken down to a daily level, 2024 averaged about 102 crashes a day in Phoenix, roughly in line with 2023 (101/day). Fatal crashes averaged 0.72 a day, or about one every 1.4 days, and deaths averaged 0.76 a day, or about one every 1.3 days. Both figures are down from 2023’s worst pace in six years, but still higher than in 2019, 2020, and 2021. In short, 2024 had the third-lowest fatality rate of the six years. Real progress from 2023, but still a tougher year on the road than anything before the pandemic.
The Real Story in Alcohol-Related Crashes
The number of alcohol-related crashes in Phoenix barely moved over six years, staying in a narrow band of roughly 3% to 3.7% of all crashes. Drunk driving crashes, in other words, haven’t become more common.
But they’ve become far more lethal. Alcohol-related deaths averaged around 48 a year from 2020 through 2022. In 2023, that number jumped to 109. In 2024, it was 95. As a share of all Phoenix traffic deaths, alcohol-related fatalities went from roughly 16% in 2020-2022 to 34-36% in 2023 and 2024.
We can’t say from this data alone why that shift happened. What we can say is that by 2023 and 2024, more than a third of the people who died on Phoenix roads died in a crash involving alcohol, a sharp jump from just a few years earlier. If you drive in Phoenix, that’s worth knowing, especially at night and on weekends, when alcohol-related crashes are most concentrated statewide.
What The City Is Doing About It
Phoenix isn’t ignoring these numbers. In 2022, the City Council unanimously approved a Vision Zero Road Safety Action Plan, backed by roughly $10 million a year, built around evaluation, engineering, enforcement, education, and equity. In October 2024, the city approved a Photo Safety Program that will add red-light cameras at ten intersections along with mobile and portable speed-enforcement units, with rollout expected by fall 2025.
The city has also started rolling out targeted infrastructure changes, like its first bike-specific traffic signal at 12th Street and Campbell Avenue, and is focusing on walkability and safety upgrades in neighborhoods including Maryvale and Alhambra. Whether these efforts move the needle on severity and alcohol-related deaths the way they’re intended to remains to be seen, but the data above at least shows why the city is treating this as urgent.
What this means for you or someone you love
If the data shows anything clearly, it’s that severity, not just frequency, is the thing to watch on Phoenix roads, and that impaired driving remains a serious factor in how crashes turn deadly.
Our team at Esquire Law has been reviewing Arizona crash data like this for years, alongside the cases we handle for people hurt in Phoenix car, truck, and motorcycle accidents. We work on a contingency basis, meaning you don’t pay attorney fees unless we recover for you. If you have questions about a Phoenix accident, we offer a free case evaluation, and a team member is available to talk 24/7.