Metro Phoenix Has the Worst Motorcycle Death Rate of Any Big County

The federal crash record is blunt about it. Among America’s 12 most populous counties, none loses motorcyclists faster than metro Phoenix.

We ranked those 12 counties by their motorcyclist death rate over five years. Maricopa County, the heart of the Phoenix metro, came out first. From 2020 through 2024, 569 motorcyclists died here, a rate of 12.48 deaths per 100,000 residents.

That edges Las Vegas, at 11.68, and runs more than three times the rate in Chicago. It’s a per-capita rate we computed ourselves, from the federal fatality file and Census population, not a number NHTSA publishes.

Worse Than Vegas, and We Named the Field

The universe is stated on purpose. “The 12 most populous counties” is a transparent, rule-based set, drawn straight from Census population. It isn’t a list we hand-picked to put Phoenix on top.

The finding doesn’t depend on where we drew the line. Widen the field to every US county above 1.5 million residents and Maricopa is still first. Tampa’s Hillsborough County is the closest challenger, at 12.28.

Two honest caveats travel with the number. This is Maricopa County, a stand-in for the metro, not the Phoenix city limits. And the rate is a five-year cumulative count, so it reads about five times higher than a single-year rate would.

Source: NHTSA FARS 2010-2024 and US Census population estimates. Computed by AZ Law Now.

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Most Riders Who Die Are Hit by Another Vehicle

The picture of a motorcycle death is often a rider alone, going too fast on an empty road. The data tells a different story.

From 2020 through 2024, 410 of the 569 riders killed, 72 percent, died in a crash that involved another vehicle. Only 28 percent were single-vehicle wrecks with no other car involved.

That reframes who carries the risk. Nearly three in four of these deaths happened when a car and a motorcycle met, not when a rider simply lost control on his own.

Where the two met matters too. 46 percent of the deaths happened at or near an intersection. The FARS record marks whether a crash sits at a junction, and almost half of these did.

No Helmet, and No Law That Requires One

Arizona doesn’t require an adult to wear a motorcycle helmet. Under ARS 28-964, only riders and passengers under 18 must put one on. We walk through how that rule plays out in a claim in our Arizona motorcycle law guide.

It shows up in the dead. Of the riders killed from 2020 through 2024, 42 percent wore no helmet at all.

And the protection rarely met the federal bar. Only 2.6 percent of the riders killed, about 1 in 38, were confirmed wearing a DOT-compliant helmet. The helmet figures use the 2020 to 2024 window, because the federal helmet-use field isn’t reliably coded in the earlier years.

Weekends, After Dark, and the Cool Months

The timing isn’t random. 55 percent of the riders killed died on a weekend, Friday through Sunday. And 43 percent died after dark.

The deadliest single hour is 6pm, and the late afternoon into early evening, 2pm to 8pm, holds 44 percent of all the deaths. This isn’t a late-night-drunk story. It’s a rush-hour story.

Phoenix also breaks the national pattern on season. Riders here don’t die most in summer. The deadliest month in the data is October, and June through August accounts for just 22.5 percent of the deaths, below an even share of the year, because the extreme heat empties the roads in the hottest weeks.

A Metro-Wide Toll, on Named Roads

This isn’t a Phoenix-city problem. 59 percent of the riders killed died outside the city limits, across Mesa, Glendale, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, and the rest of the metro. The city of Phoenix accounts for 41 percent.

A handful of corridors recur in the record. The Loop 101 leads the freeways with 16 deaths, followed by I-10 with 15 and the US-60 with 14. On the surface streets, Bell Road and 35th Avenue tie at 13 each.

The riders span generations. The median age of a killed rider is 36. A third are under 30, and more than a fifth are 55 or older.

The Toll Is Climbing

This isn’t a flat line that Phoenix happens to sit on top of. Maricopa’s motorcyclist death rate has climbed across the decade.

It went from 8.86 per 100,000 in the 2010 to 2014 window, to 9.89 in 2015 to 2019, to 12.48 in 2020 to 2024. That’s a 41 percent rise.

The yearly counts tell the same story. They climbed from 49 motorcyclists killed in 2010 to a peak of 153 in 2023.

Speed and Impairment, Read Honestly

Speed shows up in the riders’ own files. The rider’s own vehicle was flagged speeding-related in 44 percent of the deaths, whether that meant exceeding the limit or going too fast for conditions.

Impairment is harder to pin down, and we won’t overstate it. Most of the killed riders were never tested for alcohol, or the result never made the record. Among the riders who were tested, at least 1 in 4 came back at or above the legal limit.

That’s the honest read. The crash record undercounts impairment, so we frame it as a floor among those tested, not a clean rate across everyone.

What the Numbers Can’t Show

The fatality count is the headline. The injury count is the iceberg under it.

For every motorcyclist killed, there are riders who survive a crash with a traumatic brain injury, who lose the ability to work, who carry the cost for the rest of their lives. The federal file counts the deaths. It doesn’t count the years that follow a survivable wreck.

That’s where the legal stakes live.

How We Counted

Every count, rate, and ranking on this page is computed by AZ Law Now from two named federal primary sources.

Deaths come from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the federal record of every traffic death. A motorcyclist death is a person who died on a motorcycle body type, counted at the person level. The population denominators are the US Census Bureau’s county population estimates.

The breakdowns of how and when riders died come from the same FARS records: whether another vehicle was involved, helmet use, day of week, light condition, hour, month, age, and intersection type. The helmet figure uses the 2020 to 2024 window only, because the federal helmet field isn’t reliably coded in the earlier years.

“Phoenix” here means Maricopa County, the core of the metro, not the city limits. These are computed per-capita figures, not NHTSA-published statistics.

Related Coverage

See the full Phoenix motorcycle deaths data report for the county ranking, the decade trend, and the map of where the crashes fall. For the legal and process context, read Ron DeBrigida’s guide to Arizona motorcycle law, Stephanie Ramirez’s motorcycle crash action plan, and the motorcycle crashes practice overview.