Coverage
551
state-year observations across all 50 states and DC
Short answer
The national data do not give CrashStory the same clean headline it has in Colorado. Across 2013 to 2023, the broad state-trend model suggests that a 10% gas-price increase is associated with about -0.18% lower fatality rates, but the evidence is statistically weak.
The problem is not that every national read points the other way. In fact, 80.4% of states have a negative year-over-year gas-vs-fatality-rate correlation. The problem is that the effect is small, noisy, and changes enough by model that it does not support an aggressive national fatality claim.
The honest conclusion is this: higher gas prices may reduce driving enough to cut total crashes, but the national fatality data do not prove that they meaningfully reduce traffic deaths.
The comparison most readers will understand
The highest gas-price year in this panel is 2022 at 32.41. The lowest is 2020 at 18.01.
Yet the national fatality rate is almost the same in those two years: 1.337 versus 1.347 deaths per 100 million miles traveled.
That is the fastest way to understand why this page is cautious. If gas prices had a large, clean national fatality effect, this comparison would likely look much more dramatic than it does.
