Traffic deaths in the D.C. region fell roughly 18 percent in 2025, continuing a trend from the previous year that is reflected across the country: A spike in fatalities during the pandemic is now on the decline.
The drop has been most dramatic in D.C., where 25 people died in traffic crashes last year compared with 52 in 2024, and in Prince George’s County, where deaths fell from 140 in 2023 to 97 in 2025. Federal data shows an 8.2 percent decline in traffic deaths nationally in the first six months of 2025.
But deaths are still as high as they were a decade ago when D.C. and other jurisdictions committed to a Vision Zero goal of ending such fatalities in this decade. Instead of eliminating deaths, local leaders have found themselves fighting just to get back to their pre-pandemic numbers. And people continue to die on roads that have been repeatedly flagged as unsafe.
“We’ve made such big investments and … the improvements are showing,” D.C. Department of Transportation Director Sharon Kershbaum said. “We just need to continue on this path of, like, full-frontal assault to get those numbers down across the board.”
There’s no single explanation for why deaths spiked during the pandemic or why that trajectory has since changed. Experts point to a mix of returning congestion, which makes speeding more difficult, increased enforcement and some general return to normalcy. Violent crime has also declined sharply in the past two years.
Traffic fatalities involving alcohol or drug impairment in the region decreased 26 percent between 2023 and 2024 after rising for the previous two years, according to a recent report from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MCOG). But overall crashes involving drugs and alcohol and those that led to injuries increased slightly, indicating an ongoing problem.
A similar report on 2025 won’t be available for another year, and the number of fatalities can change as annual data is checked. One of the deaths in D.C. in 2025 was from a single-vehicle crash that occurred the year before, for instance.
General trends can still be seen now. Prince George’s County has seen the largest drop in deaths since the 2023 spike. Sharon Taylor, a spokeswoman for the county executive, said the effects of the pandemic, “when people took liberties on the roads because there was less traffic,” seem to be over.
But the county still sees more deaths on the road than anywhere else in the region. This past year there were 32 more road deaths recorded in the county than homicides.
“Our greatest fear is not the person with the gun; it’s the person with the car,” said Robert L. Screen, who has spent years advocating road safety in the county and state.
Iris Toyer has learned that intimately. Her son, Carlton Herndon, 56, served three decades in the D.C. police department, patrolling some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. He was on his way home from work as a courthouse bailiff in Prince George’s County on July 7 when a Ford F-250 pickup truck slammed into his Nissan Maxima on Route 301.
An off-duty Prince George’s County police officer suspected of both speeding and drunken driving was behind the wheel.
“For him to be killed by a police officer, just randomly, because that person made poor decisions — it’s still very hard to fathom,” Toyer said.
Prince George’s is developing its own Vision Zero plan, Taylor said.
But Montgomery County has had one for years, with little change in fatalities. That’s also a national trend; a Washington Post investigation last year found that of 27 cities that adopted Vision Zero in the past decade, all but one now have the same or higher pedestrian death rates. In Maryland, as elsewhere, local governments trying to slow traffic are stymied by both state control of major roads and local political opposition to any change.
Five years ago, a woman was seriously injured while crossing University Boulevard in Kensington. Zachary Anderson remembers hearing the sirens from his street. His wife wrote a letter to their local council member at the time about its dangers. Although a speed camera was added nearby, it has remained one of the most dangerous roads in the area.
On Sept. 21, Anderson heard the sirens again. Except this time, they were for his son James, who had been hit by the driver of an SUV while crossing the street. He died at 16 years old.
Hundreds of people came to James’s funeral, and his best friend described having “a black hole” in his heart. Zachary Anderson said others, kids and adults, had come forward to tell them how much James meant to them.
“All we wanted was to raise kids who are good people and have a positive impact on those around them, and he accomplished a heck of a lot of that in his 16-year life,” Anderson said. “I just wish we could have seen what more he would have done.”
Natali Fani-González represents the Andersons on the County Council. She has seen four of her constituents die in crashes in the area in the past six months. That includes James, two women who were killed trying to get home from work near the same bus stop in Wheaton and an 11-year-old girl who was biking home from school.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Fani-González said.
Elected council president in December, Fani-González helped move forward a controversial overhaul of University Boulevard with new safety infrastructure. “Our community is dying crossing this road,” she said.
The county has added more speed cameras, sidewalks, protected bike lanes, crosswalks and lights in the area. There are also plans to add dedicated bus lanes on some of the county’s most dangerous roads.
In Northern Virginia, fatalities peaked in 2022 at 125. In 2025, police recorded 88.
There is no clear trend for the number of people injured in traffic incidents, however, which is something that Mike Doyle, of Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets, pays close attention to. He founded the advocacy group after being seriously wounded by a driver while walking in Alexandria.
Doyle says Northern Virginia has problems similar to those in Montgomery County, particularly in places with poor lighting and little protection for pedestrians. Officials still “don’t have the sense of urgency that’s required,” he said.
Alyssa Kakol was on an evening walk near her apartment by the Ashburn Metro on the evening of Dec. 1 when she was hit by a county bus and killed. Her family went to the site that night, then several times after to maintain a memorial to the 34-year-old preschool teacher.
Each time, they were stopped by people who said they had been trying to get crosswalks, stop signs and lighting near the intersection of Croson Lane and Moorefield Boulevard.
“You have commuters walking, you have families walking their dogs, and it’s just so dark — you can’t really see anything,” said Sara Shoulars, Kakol’s sister.
Loudoun County Supervisor Sylvia Glass said state laws and regulations make it difficult to add safety infrastructure to intersections. But she met with Kakol’s family and is now planning a vote on a study of the area where Kakol was killed — the first step. It was something Shoulars began advocating a week after her sister’s death, starting an online petition and asking people to show up to the Jan. 21 vote in orange, one of Kakol’s favorite colors.
“It kind of gives me something to work towards with my grief,” said Shoulars, whose husband died in 2024. “Then you’re not just sitting there feeling helpless, because I think that’s the worst part.”
“Her life is now a statistic — one that screams for immediate action to prevent future tragedies,” Shoulars wrote. “We cannot afford to wait for another family to go through the devastating loss that we have endured.” There are more than 1,200 signatures.
Methodology: Data comes from the D.C., Maryland and Virginia transportation departments. In Maryland, deaths were counted in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. In Virginia, data came from the Traffic Records Electronic Data System’s definition of Northern Virginia, which includes the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park, as well as the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William.
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