Beware: The Most Dangerous Hour, Day and Month to Drive in Idaho

In 2022, 219 people lost their lives on roadways in Idaho. While that’s down 19% from the year before, it’s a number that the Idaho Office of Highway Safety would like to see fall even more in 2023. 

At press time, there have already been 27 fatal crashes in Idaho in 2023. Two of those crashes happened in Ada County (one involving an alcohol impaired driver) and three happened in Canyon County.  

Based on data available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it’s estimated that a fatal crash in the United States happens every 16 minutes. The staff at Assurance, an insurance website, recently analyzed the NHTSA’s data from 2016 to 2022 to determine the riskiest time to be on the road in every state in the nation. They dialed it down in several ways to determine the most dangerous day to drive on the weekend and during the work week, the most dangerous month of the year to drive and the most dangerous hour of the day to drive based on fatal crash data. 

Get our free mobile app

While they looked at Idaho from a bird's eye view, we discovered that the Idaho Transportation Department has a very searchable database that can narrow crash data down to the city where the fatal crashes happened. That’s really digging into the reads, so we pulled the same data that Assurance pulled for the state at a county level for Ada and Canyon Counties. 

Get our free mobile app

After crunching the numbers, these are the most dangerous times to drive in Idaho and the Treasure Valley.