365 Truck Crashes: Maricopa Tops Its Next 3 Counties Combined

The Finding

Maricopa County recorded 365 fatal crashes involving large trucks between 2015 and 2024. That’s more than Pima, Yavapai, and Pinal counties combined, which recorded 250 over the same ten years. Maricopa’s total runs 46% higher than that combined figure.

Those 365 crashes killed 407 people. No other Arizona county comes close. Maricopa alone accounts for 34.5% of every large-truck fatal crash in the state, more than any of Arizona’s other 14 counties.

Source: NHTSA FARS 2015-2024, cross-checked ADOT 2024 Crash Facts. Computed by AZ Law Now.

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The Statewide Trend

Arizona’s large-truck fatal crash count has climbed over the past decade, with a sharp spike in 2022. Year by year: 82 (2015), 71, 88, 79, 90, 108, 118, 154 in 2022, 144, and 124 in 2024. The state hasn’t returned to pre-2022 levels since.

That statewide climb sits inside a county-level pattern. Maricopa recorded more fatal truck crashes than any other single Arizona county over the same ten years, and more than its next three counties, Pima, Yavapai, and Pinal, combined. That comparison rests on raw crash counts, not on population or traffic share. Maricopa is the county with the most truck-crash deaths, not necessarily the most per resident or per mile driven.

The Buckeye Road Corridor

Inside Maricopa County, one freight corridor stands out. On Buckeye Road, a west Phoenix route carrying heavy commercial traffic, large trucks were involved in 23.1% of the corridor’s fatal crashes over a matched 25-year window. That’s roughly 2.8 times the truck-share rate for Maricopa County as a whole (8.14%) and roughly 2.4 times the truck-share rate for Arizona overall (9.75%).

Three fatal crashes were reported on Buckeye Road this spring and summer of 2026. Federal crash data runs about two years behind, so those crashes aren’t yet part of the measured totals above. They’re referenced here only as reported events, not as confirmed government data.

The City Already Flagged It

The City of Phoenix conducted its own high-injury network analysis before 2026, well ahead of this year’s reported crashes. That analysis flagged the intersections of 7th, 27th, and 75th avenues with Buckeye Road as high-injury locations. It ranked 99th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road as the 4th riskiest intersection in the entire city.

These flagged intersections sit along the same corridor as this year’s reported crashes, but they aren’t the same locations as those crashes, with one exception: 75th Avenue overlaps with a crash reported on March 28. The high-injury network is separate corroborating evidence that the city knew this corridor carried elevated risk. It isn’t a claim that any specific crash happened at a flagged intersection.

And the Fix Is Stalled

The city has a project on the books for part of this same corridor: Buckeye Road between 59th and 67th avenues. Its own project page describes the current status in plain terms: “no construction is planned or scheduled…design is on hold.”

That project’s stated goals are traffic flow and commercial-vehicle access, with pedestrian safety listed as a separate goal alongside them. It was never designed as a dedicated safety fix for the corridor, and this piece doesn’t call it one.

The project wouldn’t have changed much even if it were finished. It covers only the 59th-to-67th-avenue segment, and two of the three crashes reported this year happened outside that stretch. A finished project there wouldn’t have touched most of this year’s reported crashes. The relevant fact isn’t a missed prevention opportunity. It’s that a known high-injury corridor has sat without an active construction timeline while crashes kept getting reported on it.

What This Means for Arizonans

Maricopa County’s truck-crash death count isn’t a one-year anomaly. It’s a ten-year pattern: more fatal truck crashes than any other single Arizona county, and more than its next three counties combined. That pattern is concentrated on corridors the county’s own largest city has already identified as dangerous. Anyone who drives, walks, or bikes near a Phoenix-area freight corridor is sharing the road with a risk the data has tracked for a decade and the city has flagged for years.

The Legal Frame

These are fatal-crash statistics, not legal advice, but the record intersects with a set of Arizona deadlines worth stating plainly. Our guide to Arizona car crash law walks through how fault and recovery actually work in the state.

Arizona gives a family two years from the date of a crash to file a personal injury claim under ARS 12-542, and a wrongful death claim carries the same two-year deadline under ARS 12-611. When a public entity is potentially involved, a road-design or maintenance decision, for example, a separate and shorter 180-day Notice of Claim window applies under ARS 12-821.01. That 180-day clock is a bar, not a technicality, and it runs from the date of the incident.

For the practical first steps after a crash like this one, Stephanie Ramirez’s first 48 hours after a car crash guide covers what to document before the evidence disappears.

How We Counted

Every figure on this page is computed by AZ Law Now from named federal and municipal primary sources: the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System, cross-checked against ADOT’s 2024 Arizona Motor Vehicle Crash Facts, for the years 2015 through 2024. The Buckeye Road truck-involvement comparison applies the same method consistently across the corridor, county, and state figures so the three rates are directly comparable. The City of Phoenix’s high-injury network findings and the Buckeye Road project status are drawn from the city’s own published Road Safety Action Plan and project page.

This finding rests on absolute crash counts, not population or traffic share. Maricopa County is the county with the most truck-crash deaths in Arizona. That is a distinct claim from the most per resident or per mile driven, and this piece doesn’t make the second claim.

Related Coverage

For a 25-year, corridor-length view of truck-involved fatal crashes on Arizona’s busiest interstate, see our investigation of Arizona’s I-10, where rollovers, not head-on collisions, are the leading killer. For the federal rules meant to keep tired truckers off the road, see fatigued truckers and Arizona’s hours-of-service data. The legal and process context lives in Ron DeBrigida’s Arizona car crash law guide and Stephanie Ramirez’s first 48 hours guide, both linked above.