Crash Data Journalism

Original data journalism from the public records of Florida's crash system — what the courts, insurers, and crash data actually show.

• Which Car Insurers Do Florida Crash Victims Sue Most?We matched every insurance company named in a year of Tampa Bay crash lawsuits -- across Hillsborough and Pinellas, the two Florida counties that publish open bulk civil-court data -- against how many Florida drivers each one actually insures. The company sued most often is not the one injured people sue most often, and once you adjust for size, one big carrier generates far more genuine injury lawsuits per customer than its rivals. Two counties, examined separately, land on the same finding.
• Nearly Half of the Florida Children Killed in Crashes Weren't Buckled InWe looked at five years of Florida's fatal crashes. Of the children who died riding in a car, 43% had no restraint at all — no seat belt, no car seat, nothing. And the older the child, the more likely they were unprotected — right at the age Florida's law stops requiring a car seat.
• Less Than 1% of Florida Crash Lawsuits Reach a Jury — and Winning Isn't Getting PaidWe analyzed thousands of closed auto-injury cases and post-judgment records from Hillsborough and Pinellas — the two Florida counties that publish open bulk civil-court data, together the Tampa Bay core. Almost none go to trial. The settlement amount is never in the file. And even the people who win a judgment often have to send the sheriff after the money.
• There Is No Price: What Four Florida ERs Charge for the Exact Same VisitAfter a crash you may end up in an emergency room, and a bill will follow. We read the price files Florida hospitals are now required to publish and looked up one thing: the facility fee for a high-level ER visit -- the same billing code -- at four of the state's biggest hospitals. The 'price' ranged more than two to one, what insurers actually pay ranged almost six to one, and at a single hospital the amount paid for the identical visit varied 44-fold depending on who was paying. There is no such thing as the price of an ER visit.
• Three Florida Counties Contain 77 of the State's 98 Most Dangerous IntersectionsWe grouped five years of Florida's serious-injury and fatal crashes by the intersection where they happened, then ranked intersections by how often serious crashes recur. The danger is startlingly concentrated: Pasco, Manatee, and Orange counties hold 79% of the state's worst intersections.
• Florida's Deadliest Road Corridors — and the Two Very Different Ways a Road Can KillWe ranked every road in Florida by the people killed and seriously injured along it. US 19 in Pasco leads, I-95 recurs in six counties, and one rural highway kills at four times the rate of the busiest urban arterials.
• Half of Florida's Dead Motorcyclists Weren't Wearing a HelmetFlorida lets adults ride without a helmet as long as they carry $10,000 in medical coverage. We looked at five years of the state's fatal crashes: half of the motorcyclists killed had no helmet on — and the older the rider, the more likely they rode bareheaded.
• Barred From Medicare, Not From FloridaMedicare keeps a public list of the providers it has thrown out and will not let back in. Florida has 846 of them - about 1.5 times the national rate per resident. A federal payment ban is not a state license ban, and the bills a crash victim ends up owing do not run through Medicare at all.
• 1 in 10 Drivers in Florida's Fatal Crashes Had No Valid LicenseWe matched eight years of Florida's fatal crashes to the drivers' license status. Nearly one in ten had no valid license — suspended, revoked, or never issued. More than 2,000 had already been told by the state they could not drive. They drove anyway — and 2,883 people were killed.
• When a Teenager Crashes in Florida, the Passenger Is the One Most Likely to DieWe analyzed eight years of Florida's fatal crashes involving a driver aged 15 to 20. The young driver is not usually the one who dies — their passenger is. It is the mirror image of the crash that kills older Floridians, and it points straight at a gap in the state's own law.
• What a Year of Florida's Crash Courts RevealsWe read every civil filing in one of Florida's biggest counties for a year — 76,085 of them, 10,729 crash-related. Most “car-accident lawsuits” that name an insurer turn out not to be injured people at all, the busiest “crash lawyers” have never represented a victim, and in one of every four serious cases the injured driver has to sue their own insurance company.
• Florida Crash ReportAn interactive map and analysis of every fatal crash in Florida (2016–2023) and every serious-injury crash (2014–2018): the deadliest roads and intersections, the deadliest hours, and who is dying — with more than half of killed occupants unbelted (where belt use was recorded) and the pandemic death spike laid bare.
• The Frailty Gap: What Age Does to a Florida CrashWe analyzed eight years of Florida's fatal-crash records — every person in every deadly wreck from 2016 to 2023, in aggregate. The senior fatal crash turns out to be the mirror image of the one our laws target: sober, in broad daylight, seat-belted, a routine turn at an intersection. Older Floridians do everything right and die anyway.
• The Florida ER Puzzle: The Best-Rated Hospital Makes You Wait the LongestThe federal government times every hospital emergency room in Florida. Read those numbers and the thing everyone assumes falls apart: the highest-rated, biggest-name hospitals -- the trauma centers an ambulance takes a crash victim to -- have the longest waits, and the fast ERs are the for-profit chains. Wait time measures crowding, not care. We read the data on all 176 Florida ERs to show which door puts you in the longest line.
• Florida's Poorest Neighborhoods Are Its Deadliest for WalkingWe mapped eight years of Florida pedestrian deaths onto the Census neighborhoods where they happened. The result is a straight line: the poorer the neighborhood, the more likely you are to be killed walking in it. In the poorest fifth of Florida, pedestrians die at nearly four times the rate of the richest fifth -- and it has less to do with race than with the wide, dark, fast roads that run through low-income areas.
• The Rural Death Gap: Where Florida Crash Victims Die Before Help ArrivesIn rural Florida, 63% of the people killed in crashes die at the scene — before they ever reach a hospital. In the cities, it's 45%. The counties where Floridians are most likely to die on the road are the same ones with no trauma center for fifty miles. We mapped the gap.
• Which Trucking Companies Crash Most on Florida's Roads?Big trucks kill about 360 people a year on Florida's roads, and the federal government records every crash by the company that owned the truck. We read seven years of those records. The companies with the most crashes are simply the ones running the most trucks -- but the crashes that actually kill cluster on the state's dark, rural highways, and a third of them involve trucks from out of state.
• What a Month of Tampa Traffic Tickets RevealsWe analyzed nearly 20,000 traffic citations from the Hillsborough County court records — in aggregate, no personal data. A third of them now come from a camera, the red-light camera is the most-issued single citation, and the average speeder clocked was going 16 mph over.

Data journalism and general information, not legal advice. Built from Florida public records; we report aggregate patterns and public actors (attorneys, judges), never private crash victims.