Car Accident Statistics in Canada (2026): Deaths & Injuries

Canada’s roads got markedly safer per vehicle and markedly deadlier in total, at the same time. The fatality rate per 10,000 registered vehicles fell 47% between 2004 and 2023 (InsuranceXpert analysis) — while the raw death toll climbed to 1,964, the worst year in a decade. Both facts are real, and the gap between them is what this page explains: safer cars and safer roads are being outrun by more driving, more vehicles and a rise in driver deaths specifically. Every figure below is sourced to Transport Canada or Statistics Canada; figures we calculated are labelled (InsuranceXpert analysis).

How many people die in car accidents in Canada?

1,964 people were killed on Canadian roads in 2023 — a 1.7% increase over 2022 and the highest annual death toll in a decade. The line chart above shows the two-decade arc: a long decline followed by a recent, worrying reversal.

Road deaths fell steadily through the 2000s and 2010s, from 2,735 in 2004 to a low near 1,746 in 2020 (helped by reduced driving during the pandemic). Since 2021 they’ve climbed again — 1,768, then 1,931, then 1,964 — undoing several years of progress. Even so, 2023’s toll is 28% below where it stood 20 years ago, and serious and total injuries are down roughly 41% and 42% respectively over the same span — a reminder that the long trend is one of hard-won improvement now partly stalling.

Year	Fatalities	Year over year
2019	1,756	—
2020	1,746	−0.6%
2021	1,768	+1.3%
2022	1,931	+9.2%
2023	1,964	+1.7%

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023.

Source: Transport Canada, Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics 2023

Is driving getting more dangerous in Canada?

By the raw count, yes; adjusted for how much we drive, no. This is the most important distinction in Canadian road-safety data, and the two answers point in opposite directions.

The absolute number of deaths hit a 10-year high in 2023. But relative to exposure, the roads keep getting safer:

Fatality rate	2023	2004
Per 100,000 population	4.9	~8.6
Per 10,000 registered vehicles	0.76	1.43
Per billion vehicle-km travelled	4.5	—

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023 and Addendum Table S7.

The fatality rate per 10,000 registered vehicles fell 47% between 2004 and 2023 (InsuranceXpert analysis) — safer vehicles, better roads and seatbelt use have made each kilometre far less deadly. The problem is that there are more people, more vehicles and more kilometres driven, so the death count can rise even as the rate falls.

How many people are injured in car accidents in Canada?

About 118,838 people were injured in road collisions in 2023, including 9,261 seriously. Deaths and injuries don’t always move together — in 2023 deaths rose while total injuries fell 3.6%.

Year	Fatalities	Serious injuries	Total injuries	Personal-injury collisions
2019	1,756	8,602	139,084	103,020
2020	1,746	7,981	104,265	78,388
2021	1,768	8,321	108,552	81,962
2022	1,931	9,179	123,317	92,214
2023	1,964	9,261	118,838	89,982

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023.

Serious injuries in 2023 were the highest in five years, while total injuries are down about 42% versus two decades ago. The big 2020 drop in injuries reflects the pandemic collapse in traffic.

What causes car accidents in Canada?

Speeding and impairment are the two biggest killers, each a factor in more than one in five fatal collisions. Transport Canada codes the contributing factors in every fatal crash — and because a crash can have several, the shares add to more than 100%.

Contributing factor in fatal collisions	2021	2022	2023
Speed / driving too fast	26.5%	22.6%	24.8%
Impaired (alcohol or drugs)	16.6%	19.6%	21.9%
Distraction	22.5%	20.4%	17.8%
Fatigue	3.0%	2.9%	3.3%

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023.

Seatbelts remain the simplest life-saver ignored: 32.6% of drivers killed in 2023 were not wearing one, up from 29.1% in 2022. For more on the distraction figures — which come from more than one Transport Canada series and are widely misquoted — see our distracted driving statistics.

On impairment specifically, the criminal-incident data tells a more hopeful story than the crash data: Statistics Canada recorded 71,602 police-reported impaired-driving incidents in 2023, a rate of 179 per 100,000 — the fourth straight annual decline and the lowest on record (down from a 2001 peak of 267). Alcohol was involved in about 75% of them, and 70 people were charged with impaired driving causing death. Impaired-driving rates vary enormously by region: Prince Edward Island (515 per 100,000) and Saskatchewan (414) run four to five times Ontario’s rate (103, the lowest) — a gap driven by rural driving, enforcement differences and access to alternatives. Drug-impaired driving, though smaller (8.5% of incidents), is the fastest-growing category as cannabis-impaired cases rise.

Who is most likely to die in a car accident in Canada?

Drivers make up just over half of all road deaths — 1,025 of the 1,964 killed in 2023. But the risk isn’t spread evenly across who’s in (or near) the vehicle.

Road user	2023 deaths	Share of all deaths
Drivers	1,025	52.2%
Passengers	301	15.3%
Pedestrians	298	15.2%
Motorcyclists	229	11.7%
Cyclists	47	2.4%

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023.

Two patterns stand out. First, driver deaths are behind the recent rise — up 21% from 849 in 2019 to 1,025 in 2023 (InsuranceXpert analysis). Second, pedestrians and cyclists together account for about 17.6% of road deaths (InsuranceXpert analysis) despite being outside a vehicle’s protection entirely — a reminder that “car” accidents kill a lot of people who aren’t in cars. Pedestrian deaths have stayed stubbornly elevated at around 300 a year, unchanged from 2022, even as some other categories improved — motorcyclist deaths actually fell 9% in 2023 (251 to 229) and passenger deaths dropped 4%. Vulnerable road users are the group where Canada has made the least progress, which is why cities are increasingly redesigning intersections and lowering urban speed limits.

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023

What age group has the most car accident deaths?

Seniors 65 and older are the single largest group of road deaths, but young drivers are the most over-represented. Age reshapes the risk in two ways — exposure and frailty for the old, inexperience and risk-taking for the young.

Age group	2023 deaths
15–19	136
20–24	164
25–34	336
35–44	285
45–54	246
55–64	292
65+	446

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023.

The 65+ band tops the list at 446 deaths (about 23%). But 15-to-24-year-olds accounted for 300 deaths, roughly 15% of the total, and about 18.5% of serious injuries — well above their share of the population (InsuranceXpert analysis), which is why young drivers pay the highest insurance premiums.

Which province has the most car accident deaths?

Per capita, Ontario is the safest province and the Atlantic provinces the most dangerous. Raw counts follow population, so the fair comparison is the rate per 100,000 people.

Province	Deaths per 100,000 (2023)
Ontario	3.9
Quebec	4.3
Nova Scotia	5.3
Manitoba	5.4
British Columbia	5.5
Alberta	6.4
Saskatchewan	7.6
Newfoundland & Labrador	7.8
Prince Edward Island	8.1
New Brunswick	8.5

Source: Transport Canada, CMVTCS 2023. Territories (e.g. Yukon 19.8) are higher but reflect very small populations.

New Brunswick’s rate is more than double Ontario’s (InsuranceXpert analysis) — a gap driven by more rural, higher-speed driving and less dense road networks. On a distance-driven basis (per billion vehicle-km) the ranking shifts slightly, but Ontario stays lowest at 3.4.

How does Canada compare to other countries?

Canada’s roads are middling by rich-country standards — safer than the US, but roughly twice as deadly as the safest. Its 2023 rate of 4.9 road deaths per 100,000 people sits above the OECD median.

Country	Road deaths per 100,000
Norway	~2.0
Sweden	~2.1
United Kingdom	~2.6
Germany	~3.3
Australia	~4.5
Canada	~4.9
United States	~13

Source: OECD-ITF / WHO. Figures use recent years (2021–2023) and different databases, so treat as indicative, not exact.

Canada’s rate is about 2.4 times that of the safest countries (InsuranceXpert analysis) — the gap that road-safety strategies aim to close.

What is Canada doing about road deaths?

Canada’s national road-safety plan aims for “the safest roads in the world” — but deliberately sets no single numeric target or deadline. The Road Safety Strategy 2025, launched in 2016 by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, adopts a “Towards Zero” vision and tracks progress through rate-based measures (deaths per 100,000 people and per billion vehicle-kilometres) rather than a fixed goal. Its successor, the newly published Road Safety Strategy 2035+, continues that “safe system” approach — designing roads, vehicles and rules so that human mistakes are less likely to be fatal.

The strategy’s logic is visible in the data on this page: the death rate keeps falling even as the death count rises, because a growing population drives more kilometres each year. With the vehicle fleet now at 26.8 million and climbing, keeping the toll flat — let alone cutting it — takes continuous improvement in vehicle safety technology, enforcement of the big three factors (speed, impairment, distraction), and protection for pedestrians and cyclists, the group where progress has stalled.

Why do car-accident figures disagree?

Different sources give different numbers, for reasons worth understanding:

• “Impaired” means different things. Transport Canada’s “21.9% of fatal collisions involved impairment” is a contributing-factor share in crashes; Statistics Canada’s “71,602 incidents” is police-reported criminal charges (mostly non-fatal). They measure different things and shouldn’t be added together.
• Rates normalise differently. “Per 100,000 people” measures societal burden; “per billion vehicle-km” measures risk per distance driven; “per 10,000 vehicles” is fleet-based. Provinces rank differently depending on which you use — and small territories look extreme on population rates because of tiny denominators.
• International comparisons mix years and databases. WHO and the OECD’s IRTAD use different reference years, and countries define a “road death” with slightly different survival windows (Canada counts deaths within 30 days). Always attach the year.
• Collisions are police-reported. Minor, unreported crashes aren’t counted, and Canada doesn’t publish a consistent property-damage-only total — so we report fatal and personal-injury collisions, not a single “total collisions” figure.

Related statistics

• Distracted driving statistics in Canada
• Car ownership statistics in Canada
• Car insurance statistics in Canada

Using these statistics

You’re welcome to cite these figures in articles, research or presentations. Please reference the original source (Transport Canada, Statistics Canada or the OECD as noted); figures labelled “InsuranceXpert analysis” are our own calculations derived from those sources, and a link back to this page is appreciated.