California Car Accident Statistics by City

The chart below shows the combined total of victims killed and injured across the 29 California cities AccidentPath tracks, year by year from 2019 through 2023, based on CA OTS crash rankings.

The combined total appears to decline over this period, but that apparent decline largely reflects a change in how crashes are reported to the state by the Los Angeles Police Department rather than a measured improvement in road safety. Because Los Angeles is by far the largest city AccidentPath tracks, its reporting shift dominates the combined trend, and year-to-year comparisons involving Los Angeles should be read with that limitation in mind.

Individual cities outside Los Angeles show a mix of increases and decreases over the same period. The city comparison table further down this page lets you look at each tracked city on its own.

The table below ranks all 29 tracked cities by total victims killed and injured in 2023, alongside each city's per-resident rate and five-year trend where available. AccidentPath's rank reflects the order among these 29 cities only, and it is not an official state ranking.

OTS publishes its own ranking for each city among comparably sized California cities, shown in the OTS rank column. That figure is OTS's ranking, not AccidentPath's, and it is not directly comparable to the AccidentPath rank in the first column because the two use different peer groups.

Motorcycle riders face different risks than occupants of passenger vehicles, and crash patterns can vary widely from one California city to the next. The chart below shows victims killed and injured in motorcycle crashes for the tracked cities with the highest counts in 2023.

As with the rest of this page, these are counts of reported crashes, not a measure of how dangerous riding is in any one city. A higher count can also reflect a larger population or more miles ridden. This information does not indicate fault or predict the outcome of any individual case.

Pedestrian crashes are tracked as their own category in the OTS data. The chart below shows the tracked cities with the highest pedestrian victim counts in 2023.

Pedestrian crash counts are shaped by many local factors, including population density, street design, and how much people walk in a given city, so comparing raw counts across cities of different sizes has limits.

Bicycle crash data follows the same OTS categories as the rest of this page. The chart below shows the tracked cities with the highest bicycle victim counts in 2023.

Cities with more bicycle commuters or cyclists on the road may show higher counts simply because more people are riding, not necessarily because riding there is less safe.

This category counts crashes OTS identifies as alcohol-involved. The chart below shows the tracked cities with the highest alcohol-involved victim counts in 2023.

An alcohol-involved crash means alcohol was a reported factor in the crash, not necessarily the sole or legal cause. This data does not indicate whether any individual crash victim was at fault.

The crash counts on this page come from the California Office of Traffic Safety's (OTS) Crash Rankings, covering the years 2019 through 2023. OTS reports figures as victims killed and injured rather than fatalities alone, and that is the unit used throughout this page.

Where a ranking appears next to a category, such as the OTS rank column in the comparison table, that ranking is OTS's own Empirical Bayesian ranking among cities of a similar population size, not a ranking AccidentPath calculated. Any ranking, comparison, or per-capita rate that compares cities directly, including the AccidentPath rank shown elsewhere on this page, is an AccidentPath derivation among the 29 California cities AccidentPath tracks, not an official OTS figure.

Per-capita rates on this page combine each city's 2023 OTS crash counts with population estimates from the US Census Bureau QuickFacts, July 1, 2025 (V2025) vintage. Pairing a 2023 crash count with a 2025 population estimate is an approximation, since a city's population changes over time, so treat per-capita figures as a general comparison rather than a precise measurement of risk.

Los Angeles changed how it reports crash data to the state partway through this five-year window, and its yearly totals fall sharply after 2021 as a result. That shift affects any statewide or multi-year total that includes Los Angeles, so year-over-year comparisons involving Los Angeles should be read with that limitation in mind rather than as a measured change in road safety.

For that reason, a five-year trend percentage is left out for a city and category in two situations, applied the same way across all 29 tracked cities. First, if the number of victims in the first or last year of the window is under 10, no percentage is calculated, because small counts can swing sharply for reasons unrelated to road safety. Second, if a city and category's yearly counts move more than three-fold between their highest and lowest year in the window, no percentage is calculated, because a swing that large typically signals a change in how crashes are reported to the state, as with Los Angeles, rather than a real change in how often crashes happen. Where a trend is left out, the comparison table shows a dash instead of a percentage.

AccidentPath intends to refresh this dataset annually as OTS publishes updated crash rankings. The years covered, rankings, and per-capita figures may change with each update.