How North Carolina Crash Statistics Are Counted: Methodology and Definitions

What Counts As A Reportable Crash In North Carolina?

The booklet defines a reportable motor vehicle traffic crash as a crash involving a motor vehicle in transport on a roadway resulting in injury or property damage of $1,000 or more. That mirrors the statutory definition in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-4.01, which sets the $1,000 damage threshold, and it is the only kind of crash in the statistics. A parking-lot fender-bender with $600 in damage, a crash on private property, or a crash nobody reported does not appear. The crash count is therefore a floor on how many collisions actually happen, and the property-damage threshold has not changed in years, so inflation alone pulls more minor crashes across it over time.

Within reportable crashes the booklet distinguishes injury crashes from property-damage-only crashes, and counts the people injured. Our report uses the injury crash count and the count of people injured, which the booklet labels as persons injured, and does not report other severity categories.

Who Reports A Crash, And How Does It Reach NCDMV?

Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-166.1 the driver of a vehicle in a reportable crash must notify law enforcement immediately: the city police inside a city or town, otherwise the State Highway Patrol or the county sheriff. The investigating officer must complete a written report, the DMV-349 form, within 24 hours; a Highway Patrol officer sends it straight to the Division of Motor Vehicles, and a local agency forwards it within ten days. NCDMV’s Traffic Records Unit compiles those reports into the annual booklet.

That chain is why the statistics are as complete as they are, and why they have a cutoff: the 2024 booklet was compiled from crash data received before May 8, 2025, so late-filed and supplemental reports after that date are not in it. Our crash-report guide explains how the same DMV-349 becomes the record in an injury claim and how to obtain a copy.

How Does NCDOT Calculate County Crash Rates?

Each county profile in the booklet reports three-year averages, not single-year figures, for its rates. The crash rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled divides the average annual reportable crashes by the county’s estimated annual vehicle miles traveled, in hundred-millions; the injury crash rate does the same for injury crashes. Crashes per 1,000 registered vehicles divides by the vehicles registered in the county, and crash injuries per 1,000 people divides injured persons by the county population. The population, vehicle and mileage figures are the ones printed in each profile.

A three-year average smooths the year-to-year swings that dominate small counties, where a few dozen crashes move a rate several places in the ranking. It also means a rate lags a one-year change: a county whose crashes fell in 2024 will still carry 2022 and 2023 in its rate. Read the rates beside the raw counts, as the table does.

What Is The Comprehensive Crash Cost?

NCDOT assigns a comprehensive cost to every crash by severity and reports a three-year average annual cost per county in 2023 dollars, along with cost per crash, per person and per vehicle. The booklet defines the figure as the comprehensive cost set out in the state’s study of the impact of crash injury on the North Carolina economy; it includes medical costs, lost productivity, property damage, and a valuation of lost quality of life, and it is the figure transportation planners use to prioritize safety projects. The report prints NCDOT’s cost figures without adjustment. They are economic estimates, not the value of any claim.

How Was The County Table Built?

The booklet devotes one page to each of the 100 counties in an identical layout. We extracted each page programmatically, reading the figures printed for 2020 through 2024 and the three-year rate and cost blocks, and then checked the result two ways. First, the 100 county crash counts were summed and compared with the statewide total printed in the booklet’s summary table: they match exactly, at 284,546 reportable crashes. Second, the county counts of people injured were summed and compared with the statewide figure of 113,602: they also match exactly. Population, registered vehicles, vehicle miles, rates and costs were taken as printed.

Three columns are our arithmetic on those printed counts: the change from 2023 to 2024, the five-year average, and each county’s share of the statewide total. Rankings on the report page are recomputed from the extracted values rather than copied from the booklet’s ranking rows, so a county’s rank in our table is always consistent with the numbers shown beside it. Where the report ranks one-year changes, it limits the list to counties with at least 1,000 crashes in 2024 to keep small-number noise out.

• Source booklet: 2024 North Carolina Traffic Crash Facts, NCDOT/NCDMV, published September 2025 from data received before May 8, 2025.
• County pages extracted: 100 of 100; statewide reconciliation: exact on crashes and on people injured.
• NCDOT figures: counts by year, rates, population, registered vehicles, vehicle miles, comprehensive cost.
• Computed figures: one-year change, five-year average, share of state, and all rankings.
• Not included, by design: any figure other than crashes, injuries, rates, modes, alcohol involvement and cost.

What Can The Data Not Tell You?

It cannot tell you who was at fault. The DMV-349 records the officer’s observations and the contributing circumstances they noted; the booklet’s own form says determinations of fault are the responsibility of insurers and the courts. It cannot tell you how dangerous a specific road is: county rates average every road in the county. It undercounts crashes on private property and crashes below the damage threshold, and NCDOT itself notes that driver distraction is self-reported and likely understated. And a one-year change in a small county is usually noise, which is why the rates are three-year averages.

For an injured person the data is context, not evidence. What decides a North Carolina claim is the crash report, the medical records, the insurance available, and the state’s contributory negligence rule, under which a person found even 1% at fault can be barred from recovering; our contributory negligence guide explains that rule and its exceptions.

How Should You Cite This Report?

Cite the compiled table, charts, CSV and PDF as: Joshua E. Palmer, Attorney at Law, North Carolina Crash Statistics by County: The 2024 Report, compiled from NCDOT/NCDMV, 2024 North Carolina Traffic Crash Facts, with a link to the report page. The compilation is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license; the underlying government data is public. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct the table and note the change on this page.