A new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) report analyzing a decade of fatal school transportation crashes underscores the continued safety of school buses while highlighting persistent risks for pedestrians and occupants of other vehicles.

According to NHTSA's latest Traffic Safety Facts report, 962 fatal school-transportation-related crashes claimed 1,069 lives between 2015 and 2024, an average of 107 fatalities annually. School-transportation-related crashes represented just 0.3% of all fatal motor vehicle crashes during the 10-year period.

Fatalities were broken down into the following:

• 70% were occupants of other vehicles
• 15% were pedestrians
• 11% were occupants of school transportation vehicles, including both drivers and passengers

Over the decade, 119 occupants of school transportation vehicles died, including 49 drivers and 70 passengers, and 162 pedestrians were killed in school-transportation-related crashes. More than half (55%) of school-age pedestrians killed were between the ages of 5 and 10.

Among the 204 school-age children killed in school-transportation-related crashes during the study period, 39 were riding in school transportation vehicles, while 78 were occupants of other vehicles and 77 were pedestrians.

The report also identified trends in where and when school-age pedestrian fatalities occur. Two-thirds (66%) occurred away from intersections, and more school-age pedestrians were killed between 7 a.m. and 7:59 a.m. than during any other hour of the day.

For crashes involving fatalities among school bus occupants, frontal impacts were the most common initial point of impact. They were associated with the greatest number of occupant deaths over the 10 years.

The report is based on data from NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which includes every fatal motor vehicle traffic crash on public roadways in the United States involving a death within 30 days of the crash.