Pasco County has fewer truck and bus crashes than Pinellas, but more deaths

Hillsborough County had more reported crashes involving large trucks and buses in 2025 than nearly every other county in Florida. It ranked third in the state, according to the federal commercial-vehicle crash file as of its Oct. 23 update.

The county logged 615 crash records involving big rigs and buses in 2025, and 22 people died in those crashes. Statewide, the file counts 8,320 such crashes for 2025.

The other counties around the bay sat lower on the statewide list:

• Pinellas County ranked 12th, with 180 crash records.
• Pasco County ranked 18th, with 147 crash records.
• Hernando County ranked 32nd, with 62 crash records.

Those rankings are raw counts. They do not adjust for how many people live in a county or how much truck traffic runs through it.

Fewer crashes in Pasco, more deaths

Crash totals and death totals did not line up across the region. Pasco County had fewer truck and bus crash records than Pinellas County but more people killed: 11 in Pasco, compared with three in Pinellas.

Hernando County, with the smallest crash count in the region, recorded three deaths. That matched Pinellas, which had far more crashes. Across Florida, the file lists 308 deaths in truck and bus crashes for the year.

With death counts this small, a handful of crashes can move a county's total. The file records where a crash was reported and how many people died. It does not say why a crash turned deadly.

A truck does not have to cause a crash to be part of it. In a wreck reported by a local television station, traffic slowed to a stop near the I-75 exit, a pickup truck did not stop and slammed into the back of a Jeep Cherokee, and the Jeep crashed into the back of a dump truck (FOX 13 Tampa Bay). A man from Riviera Beach died in the crash (FOX 13 Tampa Bay).

Gaps in the federal record

The crash file is kept by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and it does more than keep score. The agency uses information from these crashes to identify specific truck and bus companies for targeted enforcement, according to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee (U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation).

That record has holes. An investigation found that fatal crashes involving Transdev were missing from FMCSA records, the committee said (U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation). The investigation also found that deciding which company a crash is charged to was left to the individual police officer, contributing to what it called highly variable and unreliable records (U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation).

Enforcement has slowed at the same time. The committee said FMCSA completed far fewer enforcement cases against motor carriers in fiscal year 2025 than in fiscal year 2024 (U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation).

The 2025 county numbers are not final. FMCSA considers its crash data preliminary for many months after the fact to allow for changes (ai.fmcsa.dot.gov), so the totals and rankings for every county around the bay could still shift.

About the data

We counted 2025 crash records involving large trucks and buses for every Florida county in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's crash file, as it stood after its Oct. 23, 2026 update, matching counties by their state county codes. Counties were ranked from most to fewest crash records, and deaths are the fatalities reported in those same records.

• The 2025 figures are preliminary and can be revised as late reports and corrections reach the federal file.
• Rankings are raw counts and are not adjusted for population, miles driven or truck traffic, and the file is summarized by county, not by highway.
• Investigations have found crashes missing from or inconsistently recorded in the federal file, so the true totals may be higher.

Federal commercial-vehicle crash file: the crash records the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration collects from state and local police reports on crashes involving large trucks and buses. Crash record: an individual reported crash involving a large truck or bus, regardless of which vehicle was at fault.

Sources

• The publisher's Socrata open-data portal (named with each dataset): Crash File, latest period 2026-10-24, released Oct. 24, 2026; retrieved Oct. 24, 2026. Data