Arizona Bicyclist Deaths Held at 44 in 2024 as Bicyclist Injuries Rose to 1,349

Arizona recorded 44 bicyclist deaths in 2024, the same as in 2023, while bicyclist injuries rose 4.09 percent to 1,349. The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) counted those 44 deaths among 1,228 people killed in all Arizona motor vehicle crashes in 2024, about 3.6 percent of the total.

The numbers

All figures below come from ADOT's 2024 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts report.

Measure	2023	2024	Change
Bicyclist fatalities	44	44	0.00%
Bicyclist injuries	1,296	1,349	+4.09%

ADOT's Table 2-1 lists 1,370 crashes in which the first harmful event was a collision with a bicyclist in 2024, out of 121,107 reported crashes statewide. By our calculation, that is about 1.1% of all crashes.

How much deadlier is a bicycle crash?

Statewide, there were 1,228 deaths across 121,107 crashes, or about 10 deaths per 1,000 crashes. In collisions with a bicyclist, 44 people died across 1,370 crashes, or about 32 per 1,000. By this measure, a collision with a bicyclist was roughly three times as deadly as the typical Arizona crash. That is a smaller gap than for pedestrians, whose crashes ran about 12 times as deadly on the same measure. See Arizona Pedestrians Were 1.7% of Crashes but 21% of Traffic Deaths in 2024.

One caution: ADOT counts people killed, and one crash can kill more than one person, so these are deaths per crash and not the share of crashes that were fatal. The comparison uses the same measure on both sides.

Serious injuries are climbing

ADOT's suspected-serious-injury count for bicyclists (Table 1-7) has risen every year in the five-year series: 126 in 2020, 142 in 2021, 145 in 2022, 160 in 2023, and 178 in 2024. Flat deaths alongside rising serious injuries means the 2024 deaths figure alone understates how many bicyclists are being seriously hurt.

Urban versus rural

ADOT's urban and rural tables for collisions with a bicyclist show where the crashes happen and how severe they are.

Area	Crashes	Persons killed
Urban	1,317	37
Rural	53	7

Nearly all bicycle collisions, 1,317 of 1,370, were in urban areas. But the rural ones were far deadlier per crash: about 132 deaths per 1,000 rural crashes against about 28 per 1,000 urban crashes. The rural sample is small, with only 53 crashes, so the rate can swing widely year to year. It does echo the broader pattern in Rural Arizona Roads Are Far Deadlier Per Crash Than Urban Ones.

What the data does not say

ADOT's report records what happened, not why. These figures do not assign fault in any crash, and they do not establish whether helmets, lighting, road design, or driver behavior played a part in the deaths. ADOT's summary also gives slightly different bicyclist totals in different tables: 1,349 injuries in Table 1-1 against 1,361 persons injured in Table 2-1, and 1,379 bicycle crashes in its summary against 1,370 in Table 2-1. The report does not explain the difference, so we use each table's own figures for its own measure and note the gap here.

Methodology

Counts of crashes, deaths, and injuries are taken directly from ADOT's 2024 Crash Facts report, Tables 1-1, 1-7, 2-1, 2-3 and 2-4. Percentages and ratios are our own arithmetic on those published figures: 44 / 1,228, 1,370 / 121,107, 44 / 1,370, 1,228 / 121,107, 37 / 1,317, and 7 / 53.