Transportation Safety
The state of California, SCAG, and local governments are committed to transportation safety for all people in our region. Each year, metropolitan planning organizations, such as SCAG, work with the state to assess fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads and develop annual safety targets to comply with federal requirements.
SoCal Transportation Safety Resource Hub
To support local jurisdictions in their efforts to advance transportation safety and help the region achieve its annual safety targets, SCAG developed the SoCal Transportation Safety Resource Hub, a centralized source of SCAG’s transportation safety programs, data, and resources, featuring:
- A summary of regional transportation safety goals and targets.
- An overview of SCAG’s transportation safety existing conditions.
- An interactive map of SCAG’s Regional High Injury Network along with downloadable data and resources to support local jurisdictions in creating their own high injury network (HIN).
- Opportunities to get involved through SCAG’s current safety efforts.
- Data, tools, funding, and other resources from SCAG and other organizations.
Transportation Safety Regional Existing Conditions
On average, traffic collisions kill 1,450 people, seriously injure 5,500, and injure a total of 124,000 people each year in Southern California. These statistics come from the ”2021 Transportation Safety Regional Existing Conditions Report,” which reviews the region’s roadway collision data, patterns, and trends to inform the development of regional safety targets and to serve as a reference when considering future planned improvements and actions.
A high-level summary of the report is available on the Existing Conditions page of the SoCal Transportation Safety Resource Hub. Fact sheets featuring key safety statistics from the “2021 Transportation Safety Regional Existing Conditions Report” are available for each of the six SCAG counties:
Further analysis and strategies regarding transportation safety are available in the Connect SoCal 2024 “Mobility” technical report.
SCAG Region Safety Targets
SCAG establishes annual regional traffic safety targets for the five performance measures presented in the accompanying table and updates these targets to evaluate progress toward safer roadways in the SCAG region. While the annually updated targets are based on observed regional safety data, trends analysis, and modeled performance assumptions, SCAG continues to endorse a “Vision Zero” transportation system safety goal, which acknowledges that even one traffic-related fatality is unacceptable.
Achieving “Vision Zero” requires implementation of a safe system approach, which is based on the principle that humans make mistakes and have limited ability to tolerate crash impacts. The safe system approach is implemented through roadway design features and traffic management strategies that minimize opportunities for human error and lessen the impact of collisions, reducing the risk of traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries.
The SCAG regional safety targets for 2025 are as follows:
| Performance Measure | SCAG 2025 Target* |
|---|---|
| Number of Fatalities: | 1,824.0 |
| Rate of Fatalities per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): | 1.12 |
| Number of Serious Injuries: | 7,879.6 |
| Rate of Serious Injuries per 100 million VMT: | 4.84 |
| Total Number of Non–motorized Fatalities and Serious Injuries: | 2,477.6 |
2025 SCAG Regional Safety Targets adopted Feb. 6, 2025 *Targets are based on a five-year rolling average.
Regional High Injury Network
SCAG’s Regional High Injury Network is a network of designated corridor-level segments where the highest concentrations of serious and fatal collisions occur over the most recent five years of available collision data at the time of publishing (2015-2019). SCAG’s Regional High Injury Network shows that 65 percent of all fatal and serious injuries occurred on just 5.5 percent of the regional transportation network. For more information about the development of SCAG’s Regional High Injury Network, view the "Methodology and Analysis" report.
Local jurisdictions in California may be even more interested in developing their own high injury network due to the adoption of Assembly Bill 43, which will permit agencies with designated safety corridors (e.g., high injury networks) to lower speeds on those roads. The High Injury Network page of the SoCal Transportation Safety Resource Hub features several resources:
- A description of HINs and why they matter.
- Recommendations and a checklist for developing HINs.
- Webinars on the technical components of collision data and HINs.
- Examples of locally adopted HINs.
To learn more about where collisions occur throughout Southern California, visit the High Injury Network page of the SoCal Transportation Safety Resource Hub.
