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

In 2023, 277 people lost their lives on roadways in Utah. White that’s down about 13% from the year before, it’s a number that the Utah Department of Public Safety would like to see shrink even more in 2024.

At press time, there have already been at least seven crashes, claiming eight lives in Utah in 2024. Public records indicate that at least two of the people killed in those crashes were teenagers between the ages of 13-19.

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. 

While they looked at Utah from a bird's eye view, we discovered that the Utah Department of Public Safety 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 weeds, so we pulled the same data that Assurance pulled for the state at a city level for Salt Lake City and Provo since they’re both popular destinations for Idaho travelers to visit.

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After crunching the numbers, these are the most dangerous times to drive in Utah and the Salt Lake City area.