Call For A Free Consultation(602) 345-1818Free Case Review
-
T-Shirt Lawyer
Fighting Suits,
Not Wearing Them.Enter the universeStories, animation and community. Created by Impact Legal.
Call For A Free Consultation(602) 345-1818Free Case Review
Fighting Suits, Stories, animation and community. Created by Impact Legal.
Jared | December 1, 2025 | Car Accidents
Updated October 12, 2026.
Phoenix car accident statistics are easy to repeat and easy to misuse. ADOT’s new 2025 dashboard gives us a better way to check the numbers. It also requires careful labeling. A fatal crash is not the same thing as a fatality. An injury crash is not the same thing as an injured person.
This page gives you a reproducible Phoenix snapshot from the Arizona Department of Transportation. It explains the filters, shows the arithmetic, and identifies what the data cannot prove. We accessed the dashboard on October 12, 2026. The dashboard identified its data as current through June 17, 2026.
With Year set to 2025, County set to Maricopa, and City set to Phoenix, the ADOT dashboard returned:
The four severity categories account for the total: 233 + 654 + 9,694 + 24,427 = 35,008. The dashboard’s two injury categories total 10,348 injury crashes: 654 suspected-serious-injury crashes + 9,694 other injury crashes.
Those are crash counts. The 238 fatalities are people. The dashboard identified the people killed as 108 drivers, 20 passengers, 100 pedestrians, and 10 bicyclists. That breakdown also totals 238.
A crash can kill more than one person. That is why Phoenix had 233 fatal crashes but 238 fatalities. Treating those terms as interchangeable would overstate one measure or understate the other.
Start with the question each number answers. The total tells us how many crash records the dashboard returned under the Phoenix filters. The severity groups describe how those crash records were classified. The fatality breakdown describes people, grouped by road-user type. Factor categories describe recorded involvement, and more than one factor can apply to the same crash.
That structure prevents several common mistakes. You should not add fatalities to fatal crashes. You should not add pedestrian-involved crashes to motorcycle-involved crashes and call the result a unique total. You also should not divide a factor count by the number of residents and call it a traffic-risk rate. A meaningful rate needs an appropriate exposure measure and a defined population.
The dashboard also returned 1,521 wet-surface crashes under the Phoenix filters. That number describes a road-surface condition recorded in the dataset. It does not prove that rain caused every crash in that group. We report it here as an example of why a dashboard label must stay tied to its definition.
We used ADOT’s Crash Facts Summary 2025 dashboard. Our filter path was:
We accessed all three views on October 12, 2026. We used dashboard values throughout the geographic comparisons. That matters because ADOT’s separate statewide news release uses slightly different totals.
ADOT says law-enforcement agencies provide the crash reports that power the dashboards. The system covers city streets, county roads, tribal roads, and state highways. ADOT also says users can filter the data by severity, county, city, and tribal area. You can read the agency’s dashboard launch announcement for that methodology summary.
The dashboard is dynamic. ADOT may revise the data after this article’s access date. Anyone citing these figures should include the year, filters, access date, and dashboard data date.
A reproducible citation should identify the view that produced the number. For example: “ADOT Crash Facts Summary 2025, County = Maricopa, City = Phoenix, accessed October 12, 2026.” A statewide number should say that no county or city filter was selected. A county number should say that City remained unfiltered.
Saving the filter path matters because a number without its filter can be misleading. The Phoenix count is part of the Maricopa County count, and the Maricopa County count is part of the statewide count. They are geographic levels, not three groups that can be added together.
The unfiltered 2025 dashboard returned 117,932 crashes statewide. With County set to Maricopa, it returned 83,877 crashes. With County set to Maricopa and City set to Phoenix, it returned 35,008 crashes.
Using those values from one dashboard snapshot:
These percentages compare raw crash counts. They are not population-adjusted rates. They do not account for how many people live in each area, how many miles people drive, how many commuters enter Phoenix, or how road networks differ. They also do not establish that a Phoenix resident is more likely to crash than someone elsewhere.
The Maricopa County filter returned 516 fatal crashes, 1,684 suspected-serious-injury crashes, 24,212 other injury crashes, and 57,465 property-damage-only crashes. It also returned 543 fatalities. The statewide view returned 1,060 fatal crashes, 2,960 suspected-serious-injury crashes, 34,784 other injury crashes, and 79,128 property-damage-only crashes. It returned 1,160 fatalities.
The county and statewide severity groups also reconcile to their totals. For Maricopa County: 516 + 1,684 + 24,212 + 57,465 = 83,877. For Arizona: 1,060 + 2,960 + 34,784 + 79,128 = 117,932. This arithmetic is a useful quality check. It does not convert any category into a person count.
Phoenix’s share of the county total is larger than its share of the statewide total because those denominators answer different questions. Neither percentage tells us whether Phoenix roads became safer or more dangerous from an earlier year. A trend claim would require consistent data across multiple years and a defined method for handling revisions.
Readers looking for named corridors and intersections should use our guide to Phoenix dangerous roads and intersections. This page does not rank roads, neighborhoods, or intersections.
ADOT separates the Phoenix crashes into four severity groups. That makes the categories mutually exclusive within the severity table. Each crash belongs to one severity group based on the dashboard’s classification.
The Phoenix filter returned 233 fatal crashes. It separately returned 238 fatalities. The first number counts crashes. The second counts people who died.
The Phoenix filter returned 654 suspected-serious-injury crashes. That label comes from the dashboard. We do not replace it with a medical diagnosis or assume that it describes every injury arising from the crash.
The dashboard returned 9,694 other injury crashes. Adding that figure to the suspected-serious-injury category produces 10,348 injury crashes. That is a count of crashes with the dashboard’s injury classifications. It is not a count of injured people.
The dashboard returned 24,427 property-damage-only crashes. That classification does not decide whether a person later reports symptoms or whether an insurance dispute develops. It describes how the crash appears in the data source.
The Phoenix filter returned 11,781 speed-involved crashes. That group included 62 fatal crashes, 162 suspected-serious-injury crashes, 3,820 other injury crashes, and 7,737 property-damage-only crashes. The two injury categories total 3,982 speed-involved injury crashes: 162 + 3,820.
The same Phoenix filter returned 1,501 impairment-involved crashes. That group included 140 fatal crashes, 86 suspected-serious-injury crashes, 512 other injury crashes, and 763 property-damage-only crashes. The two injury categories total 598 impairment-involved injury crashes: 86 + 512.
These are dashboard factor labels. They do not establish who caused a particular crash. They also can overlap. A crash might appear in both the speed-involved and impairment-involved groups. Adding factor categories together would double count some crashes.
A dashboard impairment flag also does not replace the evidence needed in an individual matter. Police records, witness accounts, testing evidence, roadway evidence, and other facts still matter. Our page on Phoenix DUI accident claims explains the separate legal and insurance questions that can arise after an impaired-driving collision.
With the Phoenix filters applied, the dashboard returned 794 pedestrian-involved crashes, 349 bicyclist-involved crashes, and 656 motorcycle-involved crashes.
These are involvement categories. They should not be added to the severity totals or to one another. A motorcycle-involved crash can also be speed-involved. A bicyclist-involved crash can also be an injury crash. The categories answer different questions.
The fatality table gives a separate person-level view. It identified 100 pedestrian fatalities and 10 bicyclist fatalities within the 238 Phoenix fatalities. It also identified 108 drivers and 20 passengers. The dashboard’s involvement counts and its fatality counts are not interchangeable.
Raw involvement counts do not measure risk per trip, per mile, or per resident. They also do not show that any individual pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist, or driver was at fault.
The road-user labels also need context. “Driver” and “passenger” in the fatality breakdown refer to people, while “motorcycle-involved” refers to crashes. Those measures cannot be combined into a single road-user ranking. A sound comparison would require consistent person-level counts and an exposure measure for each group.
ADOT’s August 27, 2026 statewide news release reports 118,052 crashes and 1,156 traffic fatalities for 2025. The dashboard snapshot we accessed returned 117,932 crashes and 1,160 fatalities.
The difference is 120 crashes and four fatalities. Both surfaces are official ADOT sources. We do not silently choose one and present it as the only official number.
For every Phoenix-to-county or Phoenix-to-state calculation on this page, we use the dashboard figures. The numerator and denominator therefore come from the same surface and snapshot. We cite the release only to disclose the variance.
ADOT may update a dashboard as reports are revised or processed. The two official surfaces may also use different extraction dates. The available source material does not establish the exact reason for this variance, so we do not speculate about it.
This is also why a publication should not copy one figure from the release and another from the dashboard into the same percentage calculation. Doing so would mix snapshots. A transparent calculation names one source surface, shows the numerator and denominator, and records when the source was accessed.
Statistics can describe the recorded crashes in a defined place and year. They can help reporters, planners, and residents understand the scale of a public-safety issue. They can also point a researcher toward a more specific official record.
Aggregate statistics do not prove that one driver was negligent. They do not show the traffic signal phase, vehicle speed, visibility, distraction, or statements made after a particular collision. A citywide count also does not prove that an injury came from a particular crash.
Fault and damages require case-specific evidence. That may include the crash report, scene photographs, witness information, vehicle damage, video, medical records, wage records, and insurance documents. Our Phoenix car accident lawyer page explains how those issues fit into a claim.
The same limit applies to factor categories. A speed-involved classification is not an automatic legal ruling. An impairment-involved classification does not by itself establish civil liability. The dashboard is a public-data tool, not a substitute for the records from the collision.
With the stated filters, the dashboard can answer how many crash records fell into its severity categories, how many fatalities it reports by person type, and how many records appear under selected factor or road-user categories. It can also support a same-snapshot comparison among Phoenix, Maricopa County, and Arizona.
The snapshot cannot tell you whether a particular driver breached a duty, whether a reported condition caused the crash, or whether medical treatment relates to the collision. It cannot establish a claim’s value. It also cannot support a neighborhood ranking, peak-hour claim, demographic conclusion, or national comparison without additional data and a defined method.
Those distinctions matter outside a legal claim too. A reporter can accurately state the filtered count and cite the filter. A planner may use the data as one input to a larger study. Neither should turn an aggregate association into a claim about individual behavior.
You do not need to turn a crash into a research project. Preserve the evidence that can disappear or become harder to obtain:
Keep the original files when possible. Do not edit a photograph and discard the original. Save voicemail and written communications from insurers. A dated note about symptoms, appointments, and missed activities can also help you remember what happened later.
Ask the responding agency how to request its crash report and related records. A dashboard entry does not contain the complete evidence from the event. Businesses and public agencies may also have their own video-retention rules. A prompt, specific preservation request can matter when video exists, but the correct request depends on who controls the record.
Medical records and billing records serve different purposes. Keep both. A visit summary can show the assessment and instructions, while a bill can show the charge. If you miss work, preserve pay stubs, schedules, leave records, and written employer confirmation rather than relying on memory months later.
Our checklist on what to do after a Phoenix car accident covers the immediate safety and documentation steps in more detail.
Data year: 2025.
Dashboard access date: October 12, 2026.
Dashboard data date: The dashboard identified its data as up to date through June 17, 2026.
Phoenix filter: County = Maricopa; City = Phoenix.
Maricopa County filter: County = Maricopa; no city selected.
Arizona view: No county or city selected.
Primary data source: ADOT Crash Facts Summary 2025.
Methodology source: ADOT launches interactive crash data dashboards.
Reconciliation source: ADOT’s August 27, 2026 statewide release.
We copied the dashboard’s severity labels. We calculated the two Phoenix shares from the dashboard values and rounded them to one decimal place. We calculated injury-crash subtotals by adding the dashboard’s suspected-serious-injury and other injury categories. We did not combine factor categories because those categories can overlap.
Counts on this page are not population-adjusted or exposure-adjusted rates. They do not identify a road, neighborhood, demographic group, or individual as more dangerous. The data also does not establish causation or legal fault in a specific collision.
Because the dashboard is dynamic, future reviews should repeat the same filters and record a new access date. If ADOT revises a number, the page should identify the revised value and update the calculations that depend on it. The original publication date should remain separate from the latest review date.
If a later annual dashboard becomes available, it should be treated as a new reporting year. It should not silently replace 2025 figures inside a sentence still labeled 2025. Keeping the year and snapshot visible makes the page useful to readers who need a citation they can reproduce.
The ADOT dashboard returned 35,008 crashes with County set to Maricopa and City set to Phoenix. We accessed that result on October 12, 2026, and the dashboard identified its data as current through June 17, 2026.
The Phoenix filter returned 233 fatal crashes and 238 fatalities. Fatal crashes count collision events. Fatalities count people who died.
The dashboard returned 654 suspected-serious-injury crashes and 9,694 other injury crashes. Together, those categories equal 10,348 injury crashes. That is not a count of injured people.
Using one dashboard snapshot, 35,008 Phoenix crashes divided by 117,932 statewide crashes equals about 29.7%. This is a share of raw crash counts, not a population-adjusted risk rate.
No. Citywide statistics describe aggregate records. Fault in an individual collision depends on specific evidence, including what each driver did and what the scene, witnesses, records, and other evidence show.
If you need a clear answer about records, insurance, or Arizona deadlines, call us for a free case review with Jared J. Pehrson at (602) 345-1818.
By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
