The figures below come from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System — the federal census of fatal crashes, built from police reports in every state. They are the most reliable public numbers available for Ohio, and they are narrowly defined: fatal crashes only.
Ohio, 2024
| Measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic fatalities | 1,157 | 1,242 | −7% |
| Fatal crashes | 1,077 | — | — |
| Vehicles involved in fatal crashes | 1,701 | — | — |
| Large trucks involved in fatal crashes | 173 | 158 | +9.5% |
| Large trucks as a share of vehicles in fatal crashes | 10.2% | 8.7% | +1.5 pts |
Read the last two rows together. Overall traffic deaths in Ohio fell 7% while the number of large trucks involved in fatal crashes rose. The truck share of fatal-crash vehicles went from 8.7% to 10.2% in a single year.
What kind of trucks
Of the 173 large trucks involved in fatal crashes in Ohio in 2024:
| Body class | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Truck tractor (the semi) | 104 | 60% |
| Single-unit truck (dump, box, cement) | 41 | 24% |
| Large pickup | 22 | 13% |
| Cargo van | 3 | 2% |
| Step van | 2 | 1% |
| Other large truck | 1 | 1% |
Sixty percent are tractor-trailers, which matters for how these cases work: a truck tractor usually means a for-hire carrier operating under federal authority, with the hours-of-service rules and the insurance minimums that come with it. A single-unit truck is more often a construction or local-delivery operation — a different defendant, and sometimes a different insurance posture.
Two details that surprise people
Rollover. 28 of the 173 large trucks involved in fatal crashes rolled over — 16.2%. Rollover is where load distribution, speed and evasive steering meet, and it is disproportionately fatal for the people in the other vehicle.
Fire. 16 of the 173 — 9.2% — were involved in a fire. For context, passenger cars in the same year: 3.1%.
What this data does not tell you
- It excludes injury crashes. Most truck crashes injure people and never enter FARS. The volume of injury claims is far larger than these numbers suggest.
- It counts vehicles, not crashes. A crash involving two trucks counts twice in the 173.
- It says nothing about fault. FARS records what happened, not who caused it.
- It is a year behind. The 2024 file is the most recent complete year.
Why the numbers matter to a claim
They do not decide any individual case. What they do is establish the baseline: large trucks are a small share of vehicles on the road and a growing share of the vehicles in fatal crashes.
That gap is the reason the federal rules exist — hours of service, electronic logging, maintenance standards, insurance minimums — and the reason the evidence in a truck case is different from a car case.