U.S. States by Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatality Rate — 2026 Snapshot

What the alcohol-impaired driving fatality rate measures

The rate compares alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities with total vehicle travel. Using vehicle miles traveled rather than population helps account for differences in how much driving occurs in each state.

NHTSA reported 11,904 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities nationwide in 2024, equal to 30% of all U.S. traffic fatalities. The classification means that a crash involved at least one driver with a BAC of .08 g/dL or higher; it does not by itself establish that alcohol caused the crash.

Not every driver involved in a fatal crash has a known BAC test result. Where BAC is missing, NHTSA uses an established multiple-imputation method rather than treating the BAC as zero or simply excluding the driver. Testing completeness also differs among states, which matters when rates are separated by only a few hundredths of a point.

This ranking does not measure DUI arrests, alcohol consumption, insurance premiums, civil liability or personal-injury claim frequency. Utah also requires special care in interpretation: its per se BAC limit for most drivers is .05 g/dL, while NHTSA uses .08 g/dL as the uniform statistical threshold for this national measure.

Top 10 states by alcohol-impaired driving fatality rate

South Carolina leads at 0.67 fatalities per 100 million VMT, followed by Arizona at 0.59. Montana and Texas are tied at 0.54. When states have the same NHTSA-published rate, alphabetical order is used only to keep the display consistent; it does not indicate a measurable difference between the tied states.

Top 10 of 50 states, NHTSA 2024

Unit: fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. NHTSA publishes the state rates to two decimal places.

Methodology

Source hierarchy: NHTSA DOT HS 813 813 controls every state value and rank on this page. FARS 2024 ARF and FHWA VMT are the underlying datasets identified by NHTSA. Supporting NHTSA and FHWA pages listed below are used for definitions, methodological context and source documentation; they do not replace the published state rates.

Coverage and missing values: all 50 states have a published rate in the NHTSA source, so no missing state values were filled, estimated by StatRanker or borrowed from another dataset. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are outside this 50-state ranking.

Conflicts and assumptions: no conflicting secondary-source rates were averaged or substituted. Rates are reproduced as NHTSA publishes them to two decimal places. States with the same published rate are ordered alphabetically only to create a stable display sequence.

BAC methodology: some drivers do not have a known alcohol-test result. In those cases, NHTSA uses multiple imputation to estimate BAC rather than automatically classifying the driver as sober or excluding the record. The model uses crash, driver and vehicle characteristics. Because the share of known BAC results differs among states, very small differences in published rates deserve cautious interpretation.

Ranking direction is descending: a higher fatality rate ranks higher. The metric does not measure DUI arrests, alcohol consumption, insurance premiums, legal liability, personal-injury claims or the probability that a particular motorist will crash.

All 50 U.S. states ranked

Search for a state, filter by NHTSA region, or change the sort order. The default ranking runs from the highest alcohol-impaired-driving fatality rate to the lowest.

Alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities per 100 million VMT, 2024

All rates are published by NHTSA. Fatality estimates use FARS 2024 ARF data, including statistically imputed BAC values when test results are unavailable; the VMT denominator comes from FHWA.

What stands out in the ranking

How to read the ranking

A higher rate means a state recorded more fatalities in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver relative to the amount of driving in that state. Because the denominator is VMT, the measure is designed around road exposure rather than population size.

The table does not identify the cause of differences between states. Road design, travel patterns, driver demographics, vehicle mix, enforcement, alcohol use and BAC-testing practices may all vary, but this ranking alone cannot isolate their effects.

Small numerical gaps deserve particular caution. For states separated by 0.01 or 0.02, differences in BAC testing and statistical imputation can make the apparent rank gap less informative than the ordered list suggests.

The rates also should not be used as substitutes for DUI-law comparisons, insurance pricing, civil-liability analysis or personal-injury claim statistics. Those questions require different datasets and state-specific legal or insurance information.

FAQ

Sources