AZ Law Now · Data Report · US cities over 500,000, 2020-2024
Tucson Drivers Share America's Second-Deadliest Roads, Behind Only Memphis, Among Cities Over 500,000 People
Tucson's roads feel dangerous. Here's the data: among America's cities of 500,000 or more, only Memphis has a higher death rate, and 675 families lost someone here between 2020 and 2024.
people died on Tucson's roads, 2020 to 2024.
#2 of every US city with 500,000+ residents, behind only Memphis · 24.95 deaths per 100,000 residents a year
675 people died on Tucson's roads from 2020 to 2024, a death rate that ranks second only to Memphis among every US city with 500,000 or more residents.
Computed · cities over 500k
Of every big US city, only Memphis is deadlier to drive
#2 of 37 US cities with 500,000 or more residents, ranked by traffic deaths per resident, 2020-2024
Zoom out from Arizona and Tucson's roads still rank near the worst in the country. We ranked every US city with 500,000 or more residents by traffic deaths per resident, 2020 through 2024, and only one city came out deadlier: Memphis.
Tucson's rate, 24.95 deaths per 100,000 residents a year, ranks #2 of 37 big US cities, behind Memphis (35.55) and ahead of Detroit (21.95), Albuquerque (19.87), and Kansas City (18.18). Over those five years, that adds up to 675 people killed on Tucson's streets.
We hold the comparison to cities of 500,000 or more on purpose. It's a fair peer group, big enough that a handful of crashes can't swing the rate, and Tucson still lands second from the bottom among genuine big cities. If you drive in Tucson, you're driving on some of the most dangerous big-city roads in America.
Computed · counties over 1M
Pima's motorcyclists die at a higher rate than Maricopa's
12.82 motorcyclist deaths per 100,000 Pima County residents, 2020-2024, ahead of Maricopa's 12.48, and #2 of every US county with 1 million or more people, behind only Duval County, Florida
Zoom into the county around Tucson, and a common assumption about Arizona's biggest cities breaks down. Metro Phoenix is more than four times the size of metro Tucson, so it's easy to assume Maricopa County's roads are the more dangerous ones for motorcyclists. They're not.
Pima County's motorcyclist death rate, 12.82 per 100,000 residents from 2020 to 2024, is higher than Maricopa's 12.48. Ranked against every US county with 1 million or more residents, Pima comes in #2 in the nation, trailing only Duval County, Florida (16.03), and running ahead of Maricopa, which sits #3.
Pima recorded 136 motorcyclist deaths over those five years, against Maricopa's 569. It's a smaller county with a smaller population, but its roads are proving just as dangerous, and by this measure more dangerous, for the people riding on two wheels. If you ride in Pima County, the data doesn't say you're safer than you'd be in the state's biggest metro. It says the opposite.
Computed · deaths by mode, 2020-2024
More than half of Tucson's deaths are outside a car
365 of Tucson's 675 traffic deaths, 2020-2024 (54%), were pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists, not vehicle occupants
Cut Tucson's death toll a different way, not by rank against other cities, but by who is actually dying on these streets, and a hard truth surfaces: more than half the people killed here weren't inside a car.
From 2020 through 2024, 365 of Tucson's 675 traffic deaths, 54 percent, were pedestrians, people on motorcycles, or cyclists. That breaks down to 210 pedestrians, 116 motorcyclists, and 39 cyclists. The remaining 310 deaths were people riding inside a vehicle.
If you walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle in Tucson, this is the risk you're taking on: more than half of everyone these roads killed between 2020 and 2024 was someone outside a car, not behind a windshield.
Computed · annual trend, 2016-2024
Tucson's traffic deaths have roughly doubled
135 average annual traffic deaths in Tucson, 2020-2024, versus 71.25 a year in 2016-2019
This isn't a new normal Tucson has always lived with. It's recent, and it's getting worse.
From 2016 through 2019, an average of 71.25 people died on Tucson's roads each year. From 2020 through 2024, that average jumped to 135 a year, nearly double. The worst single year in the dataset was 2023, when 148 people were killed.
We can't say for certain why the increase happened. The federal fields that used to track contributing factors like speeding or distraction stopped being recorded nationally starting in 2020, a gap in the federal record itself, not a question we chose to skip. What the numbers do show, without question, is that this isn't a one-year spike. It's held for five years running.
The receipts
Sources and method
Every count, rate, and ranking on this page is computed by AZ Law Now from two named federal sources, not published as-is by any single agency.
Deaths come from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the federal record of every traffic death, covering 2016 through 2024 (2020 through 2024 for the headline rate comparisons). A motorcyclist death is counted at the person level, for anyone killed while riding a motorcycle. Tucson is FARS city code 530, distinct from South Tucson and Corona de Tucson, two separate incorporated places nearby that FARS tracks on their own.
The big-city ranking draws on every US Census place with 100,000 or more residents (American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2022), matched to a corresponding FARS city record. Of 336 places that met that population floor, 324 matched cleanly, and the other 12 are excluded.
Of those 324 cities, 37 have 500,000 or more residents, the group behind the headline number.
The Pima-Maricopa county comparison uses every US county with an average population of 1 million or more from 2020 to 2024, 48 counties in total. Pima County is FARS county code 19, Maricopa County is 13.
Rates are a five-year cumulative death count over the five-year average resident population, per 100,000. Because the count spans five years, it reads about five times higher than a single-year rate would. We apply that same construction to every city and county on this page.
The mode-split figures (pedestrian, motorcyclist, cyclist, and vehicle occupant) reconcile exactly to Tucson's 675 total deaths.
We also tried to pull a breakdown of what's driving Tucson's fatal crashes, speeding, distraction, and similar factors, and couldn't. The federal fields that once tracked that stopped being recorded nationally in 2020. That's a gap in the federal record, not something we chose to omit.
"Tucson" throughout this report means the city. "Pima County" means the surrounding county that contains it. These are per-capita figures we calculated ourselves, not statistics NHTSA publishes directly.
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2025). Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 2016 to 2024 national file [Data set]. U.S. Department of Transportation. www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov
- U.S. Census Bureau. (2023). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2022 (place and county population). census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
Hurt in a crash on Tucson's roads?
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