NYC Car Crashes Are 3 Times Deadlier Than Chicago's Despite Chicago Having More Crashes - Thatcarhitme Analysis

(MENAFN- EIN Presswire) EINPresswire/ -- Chicago has more car crashes than New York City. New York City has far more people dying in them. That's the central finding of a new analysis from ThatCarHitMe, a crash-data platform operated by Injuria, Inc., that places the two cities' official crash records side by side for the first time.

In 2025, New York City recorded 228 traffic deaths to Chicago's 94 - more than double - even though Chicago logged about 28% more crashes overall, 109,112 to New York's 85,543. Measured per crash, a collision in New York was roughly three times as likely to be fatal: a 0.27% fatality rate against Chicago's 0.09%. The gap was widest for people outside of cars. New York reported 119 pedestrians and 23 cyclists killed in 2025, compared with 33 pedestrians and 2 cyclists in Chicago.

Comparisons like this are rare for a reason: no two cities record crashes the same way, so their raw open-data files cannot simply be stacked against each other. ThatCarHitMe normalizes, aggregates, and presents data from each city's official open-data portal into a single comparable format, which is what makes a true apples-to-apples comparison possible. The Chicago, IL vs New York, NY - 2025 Car Crash Report is the first in a series of city comparisons the platform is publishing, building toward a national picture of how much a crash's outcome depends on where it happens.

The pattern holds in the most recent monthly data. In May 2026, New York recorded 22 traffic deaths to Chicago's 6, even as Chicago logged 36% more crashes overall (9,831 to 7,240). Measured per crash, a collision in New York was nearly five times as likely to be fatal that month: a 0.30% fatality rate against Chicago's 0.06%. Vulnerable road users again bore the brunt of the disparity, with New York reporting 10 pedestrians killed and 702 injured, alongside 574 cyclists injured, compared with 2 pedestrians killed, 238 injured, and 204 cyclists injured in Chicago.

“To be clear, this finding cannot be attributed to New Yorkers being worse drivers than Chicagoans. A non-exhaustive list of confounding variables likely explains much of the gap, including differences in cyclist and pedestrian mode share, the average number of passengers per vehicle, population density, or perhaps even EMS response times that can convert survivable injuries into fatalities. Only after controlling for those would it be appropriate to draw any conclusion about the driving skill of residents in either city," said Matt George, co-founder & CEO of Injuria. "Car crash data in the US is extremely fragmented. ThatCarHitMe is working to bridge that gap so we have a fuller picture of motor vehicle accidents in the US, which can hopefully prompt policy change in the interest of public safety."

About ThatCarHitMe
ThatCarHitMe, operated by Injuria, Inc. and funded by The LegalTech Fund, normalizes, aggregates, and presents publicly available government crash records into free, comparable reports for the public, researchers, and journalists. Because no two jurisdictions record crashes the same way, the platform standardizes data from municipal and state open-data portals into a consistent format. ThatCarHitMe is independent, is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government or law enforcement agency.

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