Transportation

Vermont’s passing problem

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by VDC Staff

Vermont may be small, but its roads carry an outsized risk. The state’s rate of fatal crashes during overtaking maneuvers sits at 5.57 per million residents — nearly 45% above the national average of 3.84. On Vermont’s rural roads, a split-second misjudgment while passing another vehicle can turn deadly.

That finding comes from a study by personal injury firm Easton & Easton, LLP, which analyzed federal crash data across all 50 states from 2020 through 2024. Researchers calculated a standardized fatality rate per million residents for each state, then ranked them.

Vermont lands at No. 7 nationally — sandwiched between Alabama (5.63) and Hawaii (5.13), a tight cluster where differences between states are razor-thin.

The gap widens sharply when Vermont is measured against the safest states. Rhode Island’s rate is just over three times lower, New York’s more than three and a half times lower, and Massachusetts over four times lower. The starkest contrast is with neighboring New Hampshire, which posts an extraordinarily low rate of just 0.86 per million — making Vermont’s figure more than six and a half times higher.

Year-to-year trends in Vermont are volatile, which isn’t surprising given the small population. Fatal overtaking crashes climbed from one in 2020 to a peak of eight in 2023, then dropped sharply back to one in 2024. With numbers that small, a single bad year can swing the statistics dramatically — but the five-year average tells a consistent story of elevated risk.

Full report and methodology: Google Doc

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Categories: Transportation

9 replies »

  1. The safe and courteous thing to do is to pull over and let others pass if you start to collect vehicles behind you. Problem solved.

    • Amen.

      It is not just a courteous response. It is your best choice.

    • Mississippi and Alaska it’s a law about 7 vehicles behind you, you have to pull over and let them pass. When I drove in Alaska, I often did so, being a sightseeing tourist. Spent 3 weeks there and drove over 2000 miles and up to the Arctic Circle on the Dalton Highway above Fairbanks. In VT often see MA, NY, RI. CT, NJ drivers in the left lane all the time holding up traffic. Many of them are now in VT and the accident rate is up. Make VT like AK & MS.

  2. I’d like to know if there were drugs involved in these crashes. I may have missed any change, but last I knew Vermont did not test fatal car accidents for potential drug involvement. We should know so we could consider coming down on tighter drug regulations to keep our roads safer.

    • Vermont rulers actually encourage drug use; Pot is legal, free needles are passed out ODs are saved by Narcan and drug users/dealers are released on conditions.

  3. Don’t tell the out-of-state visitors that it can be legal to pass on a double yellow line or it may get worse!

  5. Make our taxpayers money worth while and have our police start enforcing traffic laws! I see dozens of traffic violations every day! Writing tickets for traffic violations has two benefits! It stops or slows the repeat offenders by increasing insurance premiums and points on their license as well making revenue for the state to pave these over neglected roads! Start writing tickets! Police should not not be paid to play on their cell phones while sitting in the medians!

  6. Impatient driving habits formed in/by rat race environment states are often the root cause. I have heard stories along the lines of “we’re in VT now, we can do whatever we want” too often. Do nothing, the state does not need more lanes – people need to remember the sanity producing environment it harbors. This is why the laws around keeping vt green are so tenacious – we do not want VT becoming another sprawling over-planned suburbia.
    One only needs to et closer to NY’s overplanned “camping areas” on a hot day to see what this freight train looks like if we continue bending the knee. And before I get snapped at, I’m an out of stater by technicality too (40yrs in VT now) and learned the difference.
    I’m on the road a lot and have seen some very “NPC hate” driving. IT has to stop.
    Keep VT green, keep VT weird
    Tell your visitors:
    Leave the bad driving habits at the border, you’re on VT timer now.