Onondaga County crash data: 46,596 crashes from 2021 through 2024, and where they cluster

Onondaga County recorded 46,596 reported motor vehicle crashes from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2024, according to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles crash file published on data.ny.gov. The City of Syracuse accounted for 16,523 of them, 35.5 percent. Countywide crashes peaked at 12,736 in 2022 and fell to 10,845 in 2024. The file contains nothing from 2025 or 2026.

The dataset, “Motor Vehicle Crashes – Case Information: Four Year Window,” was last updated by the DMV on January 21, 2026 and covers the most recent year available plus three prior years. It holds crash cases reported by police agencies and by motorists, who must file their own report when a crash causes injury, death or more than $1,000 in property damage. A police report is on file for 44,016 of the county’s 46,596 cases (94.5 percent).

One sentence before any ranking: a road that carries more traffic will have more crashes on it. This file has no traffic volume, so it cannot say which road or town is riskier per trip or per mile. Everything below is a count of reported crashes, not a measure of danger, and no road in it should be called the most dangerous.

How did the count change from 2021 to 2024?

The county logged 11,902 crashes in 2021, 12,736 in 2022, 11,113 in 2023 and 10,845 in 2024. From the 2022 peak to 2024 that is a 14.8 percent decline, against 2.6 percent statewide (390,855 to 380,819). The county’s four-year total was the 10th highest of New York’s 62 counties and 3.1 percent of the 1,525,123 crashes statewide.

Nearly all of the county’s drop happened inside the City of Syracuse. City crashes went from 4,906 in 2022 to 3,301 in 2024, down 32.7 percent; the rest of the county went from 7,830 to 7,544, down 3.7 percent. Within the city, property-damage-only crashes fell from 3,944 to 2,364 while crashes with an injury barely moved (958 in 2022, 924 in 2024), and cases with no police report on file rose from 207 in 2022 to 597 in 2023 and 542 in 2024. The file does not say why, and this story cannot either: a real decline in minor crashes and a change in how minor crashes get reported would look the same in this data.

Which towns had the most crashes?

Villages are coded separately from their towns (North Syracuse 672, East Syracuse 600, Baldwinsville 489, Liverpool 431), and the municipality field is blank for 276 crashes.

Fatal crashes followed a similar order: Syracuse 40 of the county’s 108, Clay 13, Cicero 10, Salina 9, Manlius 5.

Which roads had the most crashes?

The file has no street name field. Its only other location field is the “DOT reference marker,” the small green sign the New York State Department of Transportation posts along state roads. NYSDOT’s FAQ page calls the markers “a unique locator for every state road,” says the third row gives mileage from the county line “in tenths of a mile,” and says police and motorists put the numbers on crash reports so that “safety engineers can pinpoint trouble spots on the highway.”

Only state roads have markers. In this file 22,403 crashes (48.1 percent) carry one; the other 24,193 (51.9 percent) happened on city and town streets or were logged without a marker. So the file can rank state routes, but it cannot rank a city street at all.

Fatal crashes with a marker numbered 51 of the 108: Interstate 81 had 8, U.S. Route 11 had 7, Route 31 had 5 and Route 290 had 4. Length matters: the file counted crashes at 302 different marker segments on U.S. Route 11 and 372 on Route 5, against 20 on Route 635.

Can the file point to specific intersections?

Not by name. But because each marker locates a crash to about a tenth of a mile, the file can show which short segments piled up the most reports:

– Route 31 in the Town of Cicero, marker 31 33091249: 112 crashes, the most of any marker in the county. A traffic signal was the listed control device in 48 of them.
– Route 298 in the Town of DeWitt, two adjacent markers (298 33012029 and 298 33012028): 88 and 80 crashes. A yield sign was the listed control device in 65 and 54 of them.
– State reference route 930W in the Town of Geddes, marker 930W33011001: 74 crashes, 61 with no control device listed. NYSDOT assigns 900-series “reference route” numbers to state roads that are not designated touring routes.

The file carries no cross street, so it cannot name the intersection behind any of those markers, and this story does not guess.

When do crashes happen?

– Hour: the 5 p.m. hour (5:00 to 5:59 p.m.) had 3,943 crashes, the most of any hour. The four hours from 2 p.m. to 5:59 p.m. held 14,187 crashes, 30.4 percent of the total. The 3 a.m. hour had the fewest, 485.
– Day: Friday 7,874 (16.9 percent). Sunday had the fewest, 4,889 (10.5 percent).
– Month: December 4,492, November 4,451, January 4,201 and October 4,133 led. April had the fewest, 3,249.
– Surface: 31,470 crashes (67.5 percent) were on dry pavement, 9,642 (20.7 percent) on wet, and 4,247 (9.1 percent) on snow, ice or slush, 1,279 of those in January.
– Deer: 3,661 crashes (7.9 percent) listed a collision with a deer, 759 of them in November.

How severe were they?

Of the 46,596 crashes, 37,403 (80.3 percent) were property damage only. Another 8,062 combined property damage and injury, 1,023 were coded injury only, and 108 were fatal crashes. Fatal crashes ran 30 in 2021, 20 in 2022, 26 in 2023 and 32 in 2024; statewide, 2024 had 1,026, so Onondaga County’s 32 were 3.1 percent of them.

The 108 fatal crashes look different from the rest. 72 involved a single vehicle. 34 involved a pedestrian (29) or a bicyclist (5), 31.5 percent of the fatal total, against 1,045 pedestrian or bicyclist collisions (2.2 percent) in the file overall. 62 happened in the dark (40 on lighted roads, 22 unlighted), 39 in daylight and 7 at dusk. Pedestrian collisions rose from 162 in 2021 to 177 in 2024; bicyclist collisions rose from 72 to 117.

The file has no contributing-factor field; the DMV keeps those in three companion datasets (individual, vehicle and violation records) not analyzed here, so nothing in it supports a claim about speed, distraction or road design. The DMV posts the file once a year; the 2025 crash year is not in it yet.