Cape Coral Has the 7th Highest Distracted Driving Fatal Crash Rate; 1.9x the National Average

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Cape Coral is not the kind of city that typically appears in national danger rankings. It has no downtown grid, no dense transit corridors, and no major highway interchange at its core. What it has is an expansive network of residential streets and arterials built to move a fast-growing suburban population almost entirely by car. That design, low density, high car-dependency, and a road network optimized for speed, creates the conditions in which distracted driving turns fatal at a rate that places Cape Coral among the most dangerous cities in the country.

The research by Florida-based personal injury lawyer Blakeley Law Firm analyzed fatal distracted driving crashes across the 100 most populous U.S. cities using five years of federal data (2019 to 2023) from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Annual crash counts were averaged over the study period, then divided by each city’s population and multiplied by 100,000 to produce a per-capita rate. Cities were ranked from highest to lowest by that rate. 

Cape Coral at a Glance

Table 1: Cape Coral Profile

Cape Coral in the National Context: Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities

Table 2: Top 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities for Fatal Distracted Driving (2019–2023)

Cape Coral’s rate of 1.64 makes it the only city outside of major metropolitan areas to rank in the national top 10. Every other city in the top 10 has a population exceeding 550,000; Cape Coral’s 243,810 residents make it the outlier, a mid-size Sun Belt city producing a per-capita crash rate that rivals the nation’s largest urban centers.

Florida vs. Bordering States

Table 3: Cape Coral vs. Cities in Florida and Bordering States — Fatal Distracted Driving Rate

Florida borders Georgia and Alabama. Cape Coral’s rate of 1.64 exceeds every sampled city in both bordering states, Atlanta, Georgia (0.34), and Huntsville, Alabama (0.43), by more than a full point. Within Florida itself, Cape Coral leads all sampled cities. The closest is Jacksonville at 1.34, still 0.30 points behind. Tampa (0.50), Orlando (0.43), and Miami (0.24) all trail Cape Coral substantially, despite having populations two to three times larger.

Cape Coral vs. America’s Safest Cities

Table 4: Cape Coral vs. the 10 Safest U.S. Cities for Fatal Distracted Driving

Cape Coral’s rate exceeds every city in the safest 10 by more than 1.56 points. Reno recorded zero fatal distracted crashes across all five years, giving it a rate of 0.00.

Methodology

This study examined fatal distracted driving crashes across the 100 most populous U.S. cities using five years of data (2019 to 2023) drawn from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). For each city, the annual count of fatal crashes involving at least one distracted driver was extracted and averaged across the five years; that average was then divided by the city’s population and multiplied by 100,000 to produce a per-capita rate, which was used to rank all 100 cities from most to least dangerous.

Data Sources

U.S. Department of Transportation, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS): https://cdan.dot.gov/query

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), FARS Encyclopedia: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/

Research Dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K50k7IvnyScz0JTB9Aafx2HBTaq9dNDUE_HF4VTtGyA/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Study by: https://www.floridainjuryadvocate.com/

About Blakeley Law Firm

Blakeley Law Firm is a Florida-based personal injury practice representing clients in motor vehicle accidents, negligence, and wrongful death cases. The firm focuses on distracted and impaired driving cases and provides legal resources for those affected by preventable road fatalities. More information is available at floridainjuryadvocate.com.