How Many People Died on Canadian Roads in 2024?
Quick answer: 2,050 people died on Canadian roads in 2024, according to Transport Canada's Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics: 2024 — the highest annual count in 12 years. The toll rose 2.5% from 2,000 deaths in 2023. A further 9,357 people were seriously injured and 130,551 people were injured in total. Yet the risk per kilometre travelled fell slightly, to 4.5 deaths per billion vehicle-kilometres.
The 2024 toll in full
Transport Canada's 2024 edition, published in 2026, puts the national toll at its highest since 2012. The headline figures are:
- 2,050 fatalities in 2024, up 2.5% from 2,000 in 2023 — the highest count in the past 12 years
- 9,357 serious injuries in 2024, up 2.7% from 9,111 in 2023 — the highest count in the last 6 years
- 130,551 total injuries in 2024, up 5.5% from 123,737 in 2023 — the highest count over the past 5 years
- 1,848 fatal collisions and 93,317 injury collisions were recorded in 2024
Every one of the three headline counts rose in 2024 — the second time in three years, after 2022 — and it is why the 2024 report reads as a warning even though the longer trend is still downwards.
Why the 2023 figure changed
Readers may notice a different 2023 number. The 2023 edition of the same statistics reported 1,964 deaths in 2023. The 2024 edition revises that figure to 2,000, because late reports from the provinces and territories arrived after the earlier edition was published.
This article uses the revised 2024-edition series throughout, so every year-to-year comparison here is like for like. Do not mix the old 1,964 figure with the new 2,050 figure: the correct increase is 2.5%, from 2,000 to 2,050.
The risk per kilometre is still falling
The rising count does not mean each kilometre driven got more dangerous. Canadians drove more in 2024, and the fatality rate per distance travelled actually fell:
- 4.5 fatalities per billion vehicle-kilometres in 2024, down from 4.6 in 2023
- 4.9 fatalities per 100,000 population in 2024, down from 5.0 in 2023
- 7.0 fatalities per 100,000 licensed drivers in 2024, unchanged from 2023
- 0.77 fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicles in 2024, down from 0.78 in 2023
In plain terms, more people died because there was more traffic, while the chance of dying per kilometre driven edged down. Both facts matter: the rate shows safety measures are still working, and the count shows they are not working fast enough to hold the toll down as driving grows.
Who died on Canadian roads in 2024
Drivers made up almost half of the deaths, but pedestrians and motorcyclists together accounted for nearly a third:
- Drivers: 990 deaths (48.3% of the total)
- Passengers: 318 deaths (15.5%)
- Pedestrians: 335 deaths (16.3%)
- Motorcyclists, including moped riders: 281 deaths (13.7%)
- Bicyclists: 53 deaths (2.6%)
Age tells a second story. People aged 65 and over recorded the most deaths of any age group, with 494 fatalities in 2024. Next came people aged 25 to 34, with 327 deaths, then 35 to 44 with 278 and 55 to 64 with 277. Young adults aged 20 to 24 accounted for 211 deaths, and teenagers aged 15 to 19 for 143.
Where the crash happened matters too. In 2024 there were 956 fatal collisions on rural roads and 855 on urban roads. Rural crashes are fewer in total but far more likely to kill, because speeds are higher and help is further away — a pattern that shows up in almost every country's figures.
Seatbelts: the clear improvement
The one clear improvement in the 2024 report is seatbelt use among drivers who died. Of the drivers killed in 2024, 27.3% were not wearing a seatbelt, down from 32.6% in 2023. Among drivers seriously injured, the share not wearing a seatbelt fell from 11.1% to 9.4%.
That fall is welcome, but it is not a reason for comfort. More than one in four drivers who died in 2024 were still unbelted. And the picture for passengers moved the other way: 35.5% of passengers killed in 2024 were not wearing a seatbelt, up from 32.0% in 2023.
The long view: still far below 2005
Set against 20 years of history, 2024 looks less like a sudden crisis and more like a setback in a long improvement:
- Fatalities are 29% lower than in 2005, when 2,898 people died
- Serious injuries are 41% lower than in 2005
- Total injuries are 36% lower than in 2005
The toll fell almost every year from 2005 to 2020, reaching a low of 1,716 deaths in the pandemic year of 2020. Since then it has climbed in three of four years: 1,825 in 2021, 2,002 in 2022, 2,000 in 2023 and now 2,050 in 2024. The 2024 count is still the highest since 2012, when 2,079 people died, and the question for the next report is whether the rise has stopped or is still going.
How these numbers were counted
All figures in this article come from Transport Canada, Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics: 2024. The statistics are drawn from the National Collision Database, which collects police-reported motor vehicle collisions on public roads from every province and territory. The report counts deaths, serious injuries (people admitted to hospital) and total injuries.
Three cautions apply. Data for Ontario and Alberta are preliminary for 2024, and data for New Brunswick were estimated, so the 2024 figures can still be revised. A change in how Manitoba collects collision reports meant more injuries of a minimal nature were captured in 2024, which partly explains the rise in total injuries. And figures for earlier years are revised as late reports arrive, so the 2024 edition — not the 2023 edition — is the source to use for year-to-year comparisons. For comparison, the United States recorded 39,254 road deaths in 2024 and Ireland recorded 188 in 2025, and the UK publishes its road casualty figures on a similar basis.
In this story
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