What careless driving costs: A look at ITD’s 2025 crash report
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BOISE — A total of 28,127 crashes occurred statewide in 2025, costing billions of dollars, according to the Idaho Department of Transportation’s yearly crash report.
The Idaho Department of Transportation measures reports of fatalities, property damage, crashes by county, driver impairment, wild animal crashes, injuries, motorcyclist incidents and factors that influence a crash. It includes data regarding areas in which crashes occurred frequently and details as to the contributing causes to these roadway incidents. The 2025 report was released in August.
Where are crashes happening?
Broken down by city, Boise had the most crashes, with 3,418. Meridian had the next highest, at 2,415. Eastern Idaho cities had far fewer crashes. Pocatello had 1,099 and Rexburg and Idaho Falls had 435 and 306 crashes, respectively.
Major roadways were a hot-spot for crashes; I-84 had 1,672 crashes, U.S. Highway 20 had 1,135 crashes and I-15 had 679 crashes.
Death on Idaho roads
Overall, there were 231 fatal crashes, and 252 deaths were reported in 2025. Approximately 35% of those fatalities resulted from impaired driving. Other factors include failure to maintain inside the lane, aggressive driving and speed. Although 71% of crashes occurred on urban roads, 66% of fatal crashes were reported on rural roadways known to have higher speed limits and a longer wait time for law enforcement or emergency services.
There was a 0.1% decrease in total crashes, down from 28,158 recorded in 2024 to 28,127. Fatal crashes increased by 5.5%, and fatalities increased by 5.9% compared to 2024. Fatality rates in motor vehicle crashes are higher in the State of Idaho than the national fatality rate. However, injury rates in Idaho are substantially lower than national motor vehicle crash injury rates.
Transportation District 3, which includes Ada County and surrounding counties, had the most fatal crashes and deaths, with 71 fatal crashes resulting in 73 fatalities. District 5, which includes Bingham and Bannock Counties had 27 fatal crashes, resulting in 34 deaths. District 6, which includes Bonneville County up to Fremont County and extends west as far as Lemhi and Custer County had 28 fatal crashes resulting in 36 deaths.
From the IDT’s website and according to District 6 commander and state trooper, Chris Weadick, there is a window of summer where fatal crashes are most likely to occur. This is from May to September, starting Memorial day weekend to Labor day weekend. In 2025, there was 88 fatalities throughout these months.
RELATED | Fatal car crashes spike in the summer in Idaho. Here’s why — and how to stay safe
Aggressive and distracted driving
Weadick also noted distracted driving was a major factor in fatal crashes.
“From just the simplest fender benders all the way up to fatal crashes, we continue to see distracted driving being caused by electronic devices. Driving being inattentive, drivers failing to maintain their lane (lead to) overcorrecting and being ejected,” Weadick said.
Aggressive and distracted driving was heavily involved in the crashes reported. The 13,610 aggressive driving cases amount to 48% of all crashes, and 80% of aggressive driving crashes occurred in urban areas, while 56% of fatal aggressive driving took place in rural parts of the state. The economic cost of crashes caused by aggressive driving amounted to approximately $2.7 billion, nearly half of the total cost in damages caused by all motor vehicle crashes in Idaho.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration divides distracted driving into three types: visual, manual and cognitive — in other words, taking your eyes, your hands and your head off the road while operating a vehicle.
Impaired driving
Alcohol and drug impairment was the single largest contributor to fatal crashes in 2025. Impaired driving related crashes had an estimated economic cost of over $1.5 million dollars. Out of 87 of the people killed in impaired driving crashes, 76 of them were impaired drivers, passengers riding with an impaired driver, or impaired pedestrians. About 10% of impaired drivers involved were under 21, and the most over-represented in impaired driving crashes were people aged 21 to 25.
Injuries
With injury severity, there were more than 1,200 reported serious injuries and 4,275 suspected minor injuries. There was an average of more than four people killed or seriously injured every day in 2025.
By age and gender
The report also contains recorded crash data from drivers aged 15 to 19. The ITD says 6,676 of crashes involving youthful drivers were measured in 2025. They accounted for 12.4% of drivers in fatal crashes or crashes causing injury, with the age group making up 5.9% of licensed drivers in the state. Seventeen-year-olds contributed to crashes the most in this age range, with involvement in 1,682 total crashes, 475 of them being fatal or injury crashes.
Broken up by gender, men are involved in 79% of all fatal crashes in Idaho, despite only representing 51% of licensed drivers. The report found that men are 1.4 times as likely to be involved in a crash than women. The only category in which women were more likely to be involved in a crash than men were for drivers who were 16 years old.
The economic cost
The economic cost of crashes in Idaho was estimated to be worth up to $6.1 billion dollars, with the damage caused by impaired driving had an estimated cost of $1.5 billion dollars — 25% of the total cost of Idaho crashes in 2025.
You can find the full 2025 crash report for Idaho here.