The National Death Rate Is Falling. Pickup Trucks Are Eating the Difference.

I ran the numbers on IIHS occupant fatality data from 2018 through 2024. Then I subtracted sedans from pickups. The answer was approximately zero, and it ruined my week.

NHTSA just reported the H1 2025 fatality rate at 1.06 deaths per 100 million VMT—lowest mid-year figure since 2014.^[1] Editorials wrote themselves. Eleven consecutive quarters of decline and counting. VMT went up by 12 billion miles while deaths dropped 8.2%. If you build a chart of the headline number, it looks like progress.

Underneath that chart, the class-level data tells a different story. IIHS counts occupant deaths by vehicle type, split by rollover and non-rollover crashes. Between 2018 and 2024:^[2]

Sedan occupant deaths dropped from 13,266 to 11,769. Down 11.3%. That's roughly 1,500 fewer dead sedan occupants per year. Good. SUV occupant deaths slipped from 4,221 to 4,034. Down 4.4%. Modest. Fine.

Pickup occupant deaths climbed from 5,069 to 6,648. Up 31.2%. That's 1,579 additional dead pickup occupants per year.

Do the arithmetic: −1,497 (sedans) −187 (SUVs) +1,579 (pickups) = −105. Total passenger vehicle occupant deaths went from 22,556 to 22,451. A reduction of one hundred and five people over six years. The national rate fell because Americans drove more miles in newer sedans. Pickups absorbed every life the sedans saved and added a few hundred for interest.

The rollover split makes it worse. ESC mandates and wider track widths did their job: rollover deaths in pickups barely moved, from 2,119 to 2,200 over six years. Rollover's share of pickup deaths fell from 42% to 33%. ESC solved the problem it was designed to solve.

Non-rollover pickup deaths filled the vacuum. From 2,950 to 4,448. Up 50.8% in six years. Head-ons. Intersection T-bones. Multi-vehicle pileups where neither driver has a mass advantage because they're both driving 6,000-pound trucks. ESC—the safety feature that saved pickups from their own center of gravity—did nothing about the crash types that kill the most people.

FARS per-model data across 2014–2023 puts this in sharper relief.^[3] Twenty-six pickup models account for 41,593 deaths—21.8% of all tracked fatalities. Sedans needed 145 models to reach 46.6%. Just the top two pickups—Silverado (9,591 deaths, 1.25 per 100M VMT) and F-150 (9,194 deaths, 1.04)—together killed more people than the entire sports car and van categories combined.

The survivability gap within the pickup class is staggering. An S-10 Pickup has a fatality rate of 4.83 per 100M VMT. A Chevrolet Colorado: 0.28. Same manufacturer, same showroom, 17x difference. A Ram 1500 runs at 0.13. A Ford Ranger: 2.91. Buying a pickup truck is a 22x safety roulette spin depending on which one you pick.

An obvious counterargument: more pickups on the road means more exposure, and per-VMT rates might be flat. It's a fair objection. Pickup registrations grew roughly 15–20% between 2018 and 2024. Deaths grew 31%. That gap suggests the rate is climbing, not just the denominator. Fleet growth explains part of the surge. It does not explain all of it.

Practically speaking: if you're shopping for a pickup today, the post-2019 full-size trucks (Ram 1500 at 0.13, Colorado at 0.28, F-250 at 0.43) have dramatically lower fatality rates than mid-size and older designs. Rangers, Dakotas, and S-10 models still circulating in the used market carry rates between 2.62 and 4.83—territory normally occupied by sports cars. Check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls regardless of model year. Ford alone recalled nearly 1 million trucks and SUVs in two weeks this June for transmission defects that could cause rollaways.^[4]

A 1.06 national rate is real. The decline is real. But the composition of who's dying shifted underneath it. America didn't save 1,500 sedan drivers and call it a day. It saved 1,500 sedan drivers and killed 1,579 pickup occupants who weren't dying six years ago. The sum is approximately zero. That trend line is a lie told by an average.