There was a decrease in near collisions, severe collisions, and moderately severe collisions in 2025, according to Lytx’s 2026 Road Safety Report. But overall collision rates rose 4.53%, influenced by an escalation in low-severity incidents and minor collisions.
That increase was slight compared to 2024, when collision rates rose 9.32%.
“What matters now is the deceleration of that growth and the severity story, which is moving in a very encouraging direction,” said Tamara Prewitt Lytx’s vice president of product marketing.
Lytx’s report, which applied data drawn from over 341 billion miles driven by 6.3 million commercial drivers, painted an overall positive picture of safety improvements.
“The decline in severe collisions among commercial drivers is genuinely exciting for us, and consequential. Level 1 and Level 2 collisions are where fatalities and serious injuries happen,” Prewitt said. “Seeing those numbers fall tells me that defensive driving fundamentals like keeping an out, intersection awareness, and following distance are working.”
According to the data, severe collisions dropped by 4%, and moderately severe collisions plummeted by 41%. Simultaneously, low-severity incidents rose 16%, and minor collisions increased 5%.
Near collisions, which Lytx identifies as any event where the driver takes an evasive action to avoid impact or where the vehicle comes dangerously close to another vehicle, object, or person, fell 23.4% in 2025. That’s compared to an all-time high in 2024, in which near collisions jumped 23.2%.
Prewitt called it a “near-perfect reversal that, in part, reflects the hard work that the industry is doing to move the needle.”
She said fleets are getting serious about leading indicators that weren’t easy to capture at scale in previous years.
One indicator she is referring to is fatigue.
“Fatigue is particularly dangerous because the driver isn’t reacting at all to slow down or veer aside to mitigate damage. One second, they’re behind the wheel; the next they’ve crashed,” Prewitt said. “Until recently, the best detection models sat at roughly 50% accuracy, which is essentially a coin flip. At Lytx, we’ve pushed that above 90%.”
The other indicator – which is one of the biggest drivers of high-severity crashes, alongside fatigue – is speed-for-conditions, such as fog, which triples the likelihood of a severe collision. Prewitt added that reducing collision severity by just one level can not only save lives but also cut the cost of a collision by up to 90%, and adding just one second to following distance can change the outcome entirely.
“These are small habits that can have a massive impact,” she said.
But it’s worth noting that professional truck drivers are safer than the greater driving population.
Steve Lockington, president and CEO of Geotab Vitality, a platform that rewards drivers for safety, recently told CCJ that a lot of trucking fleets are “very safe.”
“There's always room to improve on safety, but you've got a professional driver who's often driving on a straight highway for a long period of time. They're heavy vehicles, so it's hard to speed,” Lockington said. “Typically, the fleets that we work with in trucking are already very safe, but they're looking to take their game to another level.”
Prewitt said professional truck drivers are improving, steadily and measurably, noting that they’re more attuned to their environment and more aware of device-related distraction than they’ve ever been. According to the Lytx report, coaching efforts on device use surged 40% in 2025, reflecting an intensified focus on reducing distraction.
“The problem is the drivers and conditions around them. The general public lacks the same skillset,” she said. “That asymmetry puts real pressure on truck drivers to carry the defensive burden for everyone on the road. They’re doing their part. The rest of us need to catch up.”
The report also shares emerging risky driving behaviors and national trends; the most dangerous states, metro areas, and roadways for U.S. drivers; the highest risk days and times to be on the road; and insights into driver coaching programs and actionable steps to reduce fleet risk.
