WA traffic deaths are declining. What’s changing?

The number of people killed on Washington’s roads went down by nearly 12% in 2025, continuing a reversal of the fatalities that had erupted during the first years of the pandemic.

Last year’s downward direction of road deaths in Washington – when an estimated 644 people were killed in traffic, from 730 the year before – mirrors national trends, according to numbers released Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Across the U.S., an estimated 36,640 people died in traffic crashes in 2025, a decrease of about 6.7% compared to 2024, when 39,254 people died. The decline came despite an increase in the overall number of miles traveled, which went up by about 29.8 billion miles, about 1% more than 2024.

Shelly Baldwin, acting director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, said the national numbers may change a little, since they are estimates based on data from the first half of the year and states are still finishing their own counts, including Washington.

Still, she said the numbers show clear improvement from previous years.

We are on a downward trend,” she said. “It’s such a relief that they’re coming back down.”

The federal report focuses on nationwide data, but it does show that deaths are down in most states. Even in California, which has one the highest road death tolls in the U.S. with 3,630 dead, there was a 6.3% decrease from last year.

Washington D.C. saw the biggest comparative decrease, at 46.8%, but the raw numbers there are relatively low, with just 25 traffic deaths last year. The toll in Texas, on the other hand, dropped by 385 deaths, but since it sees so many people killed on its roads – 3,775 last year – that decline represented just a 9% change.

Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont and Wyoming all saw increases in deaths.

Washington state hasn’t yet released official numbers, Baldwin said, because it does more fine-grained analysis than the federal agency’s statistical extrapolation, including looking at the death certificate of each person killed on the road. Those take some time to come in from the state’s coroners and medical examiners, and the certificate could show that the cause of death was a medical event like a heart attack, meaning it won’t count as a traffic fatality.

Driving pandemic behavior

She expects the official numbers, due in May, to reflect what the feds have found, which is a gradual return to prepandemic driving behaviors.

In 2019, 538 people were killed on Washington’s roads. Just four years later, in 2023, the number of fatalities reached an apex, with 809 people dead, a 33-year high. That’s more than a 50% increase.

Baldwin said recent research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety about reckless driving during the pandemic has helped prove what many speculated. Alcohol use increased, which led to an increase in driving while drunk, and so did emergency room visits by people experiencing major depression and suicidal ideation.

“It’s exactly what we saw everywhere during COVID. People feeling disconnected. People feeling lonely. People being upset about the way the world was going,” she said. “We saw all unsafe traffic behaviors increase: DUI, speeding, distracted driving and not wearing a seat belt.”

What’s more, as stay-home orders abounded, the roads cleared and the number of miles traveled dropped. Some drivers saw the wide open roads, and floored it. So despite there being fewer drivers, there was a boom in speeding.

At the same time, there was a visible reduction in traffic law enforcement as officers were ordered to avoid nonessential contact with people, for a variety of reasons but primarily to help slow the transmission of COVID-19.

Soon enough, drivers returned to the roads, but cops largely didn’t.

At a March meeting of the Washington State Transportation Commission, Mark McKechnie, with the state traffic safety commission, said the state struggled to recruit officers to do high-visibility enforcement, which acts as a deterrent.

“Literally during COVID we could not find officers to take these shifts,” McKechnie said.

As concerns faded, more officers returned to traffic enforcement. Since 2022, DUI arrests, as well as speed warnings and tickets, have gone up year to year. McKechnie and Baldwin said the enforcement has played a major role in the decrease in deaths.

Peril for pedestrians

Baldwin said when the state numbers do come out, they likely will show that pedestrians remain vulnerable on Washington’s roads. The three deadliest years for Washington’s pedestrians in recent history were 2021, 2023 and 2024. That’s unlikely to change, Baldwin said, noting the height of current car hoods, which are taller and pose a much greater threat to pedestrians, and lack of separated walkways for people on foot.

Despite obvious flaws in road design that lead to speeding or other risky behavior, Baldwin said zero-ing out the death toll is within reach.

“This (driving) is the most dangerous thing you do on a daily basis. It’s hard to remember that,” Baldwin said. “We could reach zero tomorrow if people would do four things: Drive the speed limit, drive sober, wear your seat belt and put your phone away. Four things that are in everybody’s control.