How have gig and delivery driver crashes changed over time?

App-based delivery and rideshare work have expanded across every region, increasing the number of people on the road for work and the hours they spend there. Injury data show a clear rise in the safety burden facing delivery workers, with emergency-department-treated injuries among Couriers and Messengers rising from roughly 13,000 in 2015 to 35,000 in 2022.

What are the top 10 highest-risk jurisdictions for gig and delivery drivers?

The top 10 highest-risk jurisdictions for gig and delivery drivers are: 1. Arizona, 75.16; 2. Nevada, 70.00; 3. South Carolina, 68.38; 4. Louisiana, 63.25; 5. Florida, 60.71; 6. New Mexico, 57.60; 7. District of Columbia, 55.74; 8. California, 51.02; 9. Texas, 50.35; 10. Delaware, 48.66.

What are the insurance challenges faced by gig and delivery drivers?

Insurance challenges for gig and delivery drivers include potential gaps when a rideshare or delivery app is turned on but the driver has not yet accepted a request. Coverage can change minute to minute based on status, and personal auto policies may not cover paid delivery driving. The Texas Department of Insurance warns that failing to disclose business use could result in a claim being denied.

Gig & Delivery Driver Crash Risks by State (2026)

Q: What is the Gig and Delivery Driver Road Risk Index?

The Gig and Delivery Driver Road Risk Index ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia on five equally weighted factors that reflect exposure and roadway danger: gig and delivery work exposure, speeding risk, urban roadway risk, pedestrian risk, and pedalcyclist risk. Each factor carries 20 percent of the overall score and is normalized on a 0 to 100 scale, with higher scores representing greater risk.

App workflows require drivers to manage navigation, orders, messages, and deadlines at once, raising crash risk state by state

App-based driving and home delivery have expanded rapidly, increasing how long delivery and rideshare workers spend on the road and intensifying the safety pressures they face each shift.

In 2023, more than 2.8 million nonemployer establishments fell within our proxy industries for gig/delivery exposure; emergency-department-treated injuries among Couriers and Messengers rose from roughly 13,000 in 2015 to 35,000 in 2022; and in 2024, 3,208 people died in distracted-driving crashes nationwide.

To locate where these pressures collide with the most dangerous road environments, we built a five-factor, equally weighted, 0 to 100 Gig & Delivery Driver Road Risk Index for all 50 states and D.C., finding Arizona No. 1 (75.16) and Texas No. 9 (50.35).

Rather than treating every courier or distraction-related crash as a confirmed “gig-driver crash,” this study combines direct research on app-based drivers with occupational injury data, distracted-driving statistics, speeding research, pedestrian and pedalcyclist fatalities, insurance coverage rules, and gig-work exposure to reveal where risk is most concentrated.

The Texas Law Dog presents this analysis to help delivery workers, rideshare drivers, and crash victims understand today’s risks and their legal options after a crash.

How Gig and Delivery Driver Crashes Have Changed Over Time

App-based delivery and rideshare work have expanded across every region, increasing the number of people on the road for work and the hours they spend there.

In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau counted more than 2.8 million nonemployer establishments in two proxy industries for gig and delivery exposure, including 1,438,339 in Couriers and Messengers and 1,376,397 in Taxi and Limousine Service across the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

These categories are used as a proxy for app-based driving and delivery exposure. They are not a headcount of DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, or other platform drivers.

Injury Trends Show a Rising Safety Burden

Injury data show a clear rise in the safety burden facing delivery workers. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates approximately 182,000 emergency-department-treated occupational injuries among workers in the Couriers and Messengers industry from 2015 through 2022.

Annual estimates grew from roughly 13,000 in 2015 to 35,000 in 2022. Workers ages 25 to 34 accounted for the largest share at 30 percent, followed by ages 18 to 24 at 22 percent.

Men accounted for 69 percent of estimated emergency-department-treated injuries. These are not counts of gig-driver crashes. The Couriers and Messengers category includes a broader group of delivery workers.

Transportation incidents are a major contributor to harm. NIOSH estimates about 14,000 emergency-department-treated injuries from transportation incidents among Couriers and Messengers during the 2015 through 2022 period.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded approximately 77,000 employer-reported injury and illness cases in Couriers and Messengers in 2023. In 2024, 56 workers in this industry died from occupational injuries, including 35 deaths involving transportation incidents.

Transportation, therefore, accounted for nearly two-thirds of occupational deaths in the industry that year.

The Gig and Delivery Driver Road Risk Index

To connect these trends to the road environments workers face, the Gig and Delivery Driver Road Risk Index ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia on five equally weighted factors that reflect exposure and roadway danger: gig and delivery work exposure, speeding risk, urban roadway risk, pedestrian risk, and pedalcyclist risk.

Each factor carries 20 percent of the overall score and is normalized on a 0 to 100 scale, with higher scores representing greater risk.

The index measures the road environment and exposure faced by app-based and delivery workers. It is not a count of crashes caused by gig workers, and the exposure categories are proxies rather than exact driver totals.

Results highlight a wide variation in risk. Arizona ranks No. 1 with a score of 75.16. North Dakota ranks No. 51 at 7.25. Texas ranks No. 9 with an overall score of 50.35.

Full Risk Index:

Where Gig and Delivery Drivers Face the Greatest Crash Risk

We ranked every state and D.C. by the combined effect of gig and delivery work exposure and roadway danger. Scores come from the Gig and Delivery Driver Road Risk Index, which blends five factors with equal weights. Higher scores indicate greater potential risk for workers who spend their shifts driving.

Top 10 Highest-Risk Jurisdictions:

1. Arizona, 75.16
2. Nevada, 70.00
3. South Carolina, 68.38
4. Louisiana, 63.25
5. Florida, 60.71
6. New Mexico, 57.60
7. District of Columbia, 55.74
8. California, 51.02
9. Texas, 50.35
10. Delaware, 48.66

Lowest-Risk Jurisdictions:

42. Kansas, 20.85
43. Ohio, 19.57
44. Wisconsin, 17.89
45. New Hampshire, 17.52
46. Utah, 17.42
47. Iowa, 15.36
48. Minnesota, 15.33
49. Idaho, 14.97
50. Maine, 12.07
51. North Dakota, 7.25

Different Reasons for Highest-Ranking States

Arizona ranks No. 1 overall and has the highest urban roadway fatality rate in the index at 1.560 deaths per 100 million urban vehicle miles traveled. It also ranks No. 3 for speeding risk, No. 5 for pedestrian risk, and No. 4 for pedalcyclist risk.
Nevada ranks No. 2 overall and combines dangerous road environments with very high gig and delivery exposure. It ranks No. 5 for exposure and No. 5 for urban roadway risk.
South Carolina ranks No. 3 overall despite being No. 30 for exposure. Its roadway conditions push it up the list. The state ranks No. 4 for speeding risk, No. 3 for urban roadway risk, No. 7 for pedestrian risk, and No. 3 for pedalcyclist risk.
Louisiana ranks No. 4 overall and has the highest pedalcyclist fatality rate in the index at 0.957 deaths per 100,000 residents. It also ranks No. 3 for pedestrian risk while ranking only No. 33 for exposure.
Florida ranks No. 5 overall despite having the lowest speeding fatality rate in the index. Its position is driven by No. 2 exposure, No. 6 pedestrian risk, and No. 2 pedalcyclist risk.
New Mexico ranks No. 6 overall despite ranking No. 40 for exposure. It has the highest pedestrian fatality rate nationally at 4.225 deaths per 100,000 residents and ranks No. 5 for speeding risk.

Strong Cross-Cutting Patterns

Nine of the 10 highest-risk jurisdictions also rank in the national top 10 for pedestrian fatality risk. Texas is the only exception. It ranks No. 13 for pedestrian risk.
Seven of the 10 highest-risk jurisdictions also rank in the top 10 for urban roadway risk. These include Arizona, Nevada, South Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, and Texas.
Seven of the 10 highest-risk jurisdictions also rank in the top 10 for pedalcyclist risk. These include Arizona, Nevada, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, California, and Delaware.
Six of the 10 highest-risk jurisdictions also rank in the top 10 for speeding risk. These include Arizona, Nevada, South Carolina, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, and Texas.
Only three of the overall top 10 are also top 10 for gig and delivery exposure. These are Nevada, Florida, and the District of Columbia. A large gig workforce alone does not determine risk.

Texas Spotlight

Texas ranks No. 9 overall with a score of 50.35. Four of its five components are above the national median, which helps explain its top 10 placement.

Exposure: 793.46 nonemployer establishments per 100,000 residents, compared with a national median of approximately 652.90.
Speeding: 0.485 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared with a national median of approximately 0.322.
Urban roadway: 1.179 fatalities per 100 million urban vehicle miles traveled, compared with a national median of approximately 1.007.
Pedestrians: 2.438 fatalities per 100,000 residents, compared with a national median of approximately 1.880.
Pedalcyclist: Texas ranks No. 25, which is relatively lower than its other components but not enough to offset the higher risks elsewhere.

Exposure Leaders Are Not Always Overall Risk Leaders

New York has the highest exposure rate at 1,335.60 establishments per 100,000 residents. It is followed by Florida at 1,215.00, Maryland at 1,191.66, New Jersey at 1,168.24, and Nevada at 1,155.39.

Only Florida and Nevada are among the five highest-risk jurisdictions overall. This reinforces that the index measures the overall environment drivers face, not simply where the most gig workers are located.

The index blends five equally weighted components that capture exposure and road danger. Each factor is normalized on a 0 to 100 scale. The goal is to pinpoint where workers who drive for their livelihood face the most hazardous conditions.

Distracted Driving, Stress, and Road Rage Behind the Wheel

App-based driving layers a constant stream of tasks onto normal roadway demands. A driver may be navigating unfamiliar streets, monitoring new order offers, weighing pay-versus-distance, scanning pickup instructions, messaging customers, and watching app performance metrics, all while dealing with congestion and unpredictable behavior from other motorists.

This makes the in-vehicle smartphone (and occasionally multiple apps) a central work tool as well as a potential source of visual, manual, and cognitive distraction.

A 2025 survey of gig drivers found 68% used two or more platforms during a typical month, indicating that “multi-apping” is common within the workforce.

That pattern can increase the number of apps a driver manages across shifts, which may add to task-switching demands, even though it does not necessarily mean drivers are running multiple apps at the same time while the vehicle is moving.

A typical app-based delivery workflow:

New order alert
Check pay, distance, and timing
Accept or reject
GPS navigation to pick up
Review pickup instructions (e.g., parking, entrance)
Customer communication as needed
Navigate to drop-off
Follow delivery instructions (e.g., hand-to-customer, leave at door)
Confirm delivery and transition to the next order

This routine can repeat many times per shift. Each step risks adding glances, taps, and decisions that compete with the continuous attention driving requires.

How the Toolkit Maps to NIOSH Distraction Types

NIOSH separates distraction into three categories: visual, manual, and cognitive. These readily map onto common gig-driving tasks:

Visual: Looking at the screen for a new offer, glancing at GPS prompts, and reading pickup/drop-off notes.
Manual: Tapping to accept/decline, swiping through navigation or chat, selecting “arrived” or “delivered.”
Cognitive: Evaluating pay versus distance and time, choosing among orders, rerouting on the fly, and context-switching between work tasks and traffic hazards.

Naturalistic driving research indicates that combining multiple secondary tasks generally degrades driving performance more than performing a single secondary task, underscoring why stacked app interactions can be risky when they overlap with vehicle control.

Gig-driving tasks can involve all three NIOSH distraction types because workers may be viewing offers, touching the screen, following GPS, reviewing instructions, and communicating with customers while navigating traffic.

What the Data Say About Distraction in Crashes

Nationally, in 2024, distracted-driving crashes killed 3,208 people, and an estimated 315,167 people were injured. Distracted drivers were involved in approximately 8% of fatal crashes.

In Texas alone, 2025 saw 86,384 distracted-driving crashes that led to 2,437 serious injuries and 299 deaths. These figures reflect distraction across all drivers, not specifically gig workers, but they illustrate the scale of harm when attention is diverted from the roadway.

Distracted-driving counts are intentionally excluded from the index score because differences in how states identify and report distraction make direct state comparisons less reliable; distraction remains a behavioral focus of this study, not one of the five ranking factors.

Stress, Frustration, and Aggressive Driving Pressures

High mental workload often coincides with long hours in traffic, repeated stops, and delivery deadlines, which are conditions associated with stress and negative driving emotions.

In 2026 research on commercial drivers, 47% reported often feeling stressed while driving for work, 43% felt frustrated, and 27% felt enraged; 60% worried that aggressive drivers around them could cause a crash.

Aggressive driving is widespread in the broader U.S. driving population. AAA Foundation research found 96% of surveyed drivers reported at least one aggressive-driving or road-rage behavior in the prior year.

Taken together, the data suggest that driving for work can involve substantial stress, while aggressive driving is already common on U.S. roads. There is no reliable national statistic showing that gig drivers experience road rage more often than other motorists.

The available evidence supports a high-stress working environment for many drivers, which can elevate frustration and the risk of aggressive behaviors, both from the worker and from surrounding traffic.

The Pressure to Deliver Faster: Tips, Timers, and the Cost of a Crash

A 2026 peer-reviewed study of food-delivery drivers that analyzed 87 posts and 1,970 comments from DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats communities repeatedly identified high on-time performance expectations as a factor influencing speeding.

Some drivers in those discussions also described large tips as influencing their decision to drive faster, while company speed monitoring and driver-record reviews discouraged speeding, illustrating a tug-of-war between incentives and enforcement.

In New York City, workers completed 1.89 deliveries per hour in Q1 2024 (25% more than a year earlier), while total app deliveries climbed 8% to more than 2.77 million per week.

Higher throughput compresses slack time between tasks, and when timers, ETAs, and “arrive by” targets are prominent, the system can nudge workers to rush even if policies forbid unsafe driving.

When Pressure Meets the Road: Speeding and Rushing

Time pressure is a known crash risk for delivery work; NIOSH notes that drivers working under deadlines are more likely to be involved in crashes.

In our index, speeding emerges as one of the strongest recurring patterns among the highest-risk jurisdictions: six of the 10 highest-risk jurisdictions overall also rank among the national top 10 for speeding risk.

Texas, for example, ranks No. 9 for speeding risk, with 0.485 speeding-related fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Still, speeding alone does not determine overall risk; Montana has the highest speeding fatality rate but ranks No. 28 overall, while Florida ranks No. 5 overall despite having the lowest speeding fatality rate in the index.

From Crash to Cost: Who Pays Afterward?

The human cost of a crash is often paired with a financial shock. In a Cornell survey of 500 NYC food-delivery workers, 49% reported experiencing a work-related crash or accident; among those, 75% said they paid their own medical expenses.

That finding points directly to insurance gaps, especially when personal vehicles are used for app-based work.

For Texas drivers in particular, the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) warns that some personal auto policies do not cover paid delivery driving, and failing to disclose business use could result in a claim being denied. TDI also notes that most personal auto policies do not include coverage for rideshare driving.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) highlights a potential gap when a rideshare or delivery app is turned on, but the driver has not yet accepted a request; NAIC also notes that drivers may run multiple apps at once, complicating which policy applies after a crash.

Coverage can therefore change minute to minute based on status:

Personal Driving (App Off): The driver’s personal policy typically applies; undisclosed business use can jeopardize claims.
App Online, Waiting: A known potential coverage gap highlighted by NAIC; responsibility may be unclear.
Trip or Order Accepted: Platform coverage may begin, but details vary by company and policy.
Active Ride or Delivery: Coverage is often more robust than during the waiting period, but limits and deductibles differ.
Job Completed: Coverage may revert once the app is off or the worker is no longer on an active assignment.

Pay-per-order structures, on-time metrics, and dispatch cadence can increase the temptation to rush, and speeding risk shows up repeatedly in high-risk jurisdictions. When crashes happen, who pays depends on what the driver was doing and on their precise app status at that moment.

E-Bikes, Intersections, and the Last-Mile Delivery Problem

Micromobility now anchors urban delivery. New York City has more than 65,000 app delivery workers who rely on e-bikes, bicycles, and mopeds, and 76% of 2023 cycling fatalities involved e-bikes. Riders work at conflict points: intersections, bike lanes, curb space, restaurant entrances, and pedestrian-heavy streets, where frequent pickups and drop-offs can look like weaving or rolling stops.

Research points beyond rider behavior alone: high order volumes, short timeframes, deactivation pressure, infrastructure gaps, turning vehicles, and road design all raise risk. Nationally, the index uses 7,080 pedestrian and 1,103 pedalcyclist deaths (NHTSA FARS 2024) and shows strong clustering.

Texas is a contrast, sitting at No. 9 overall but No. 13 for pedestrian and No. 25 for pedalcyclist risk. For comparability, we use FARS counts (763 pedestrians; 79 pedalcyclist), while TxDOT reports 772 and 80 in 2024 and cites driver inattention, speeding, and failure to yield among leading factors.

Conclusion

App-based delivery concentrates risk where time pressure meets complex streets. Pay and ratings can push drivers and riders to rush, while speeding, turning-vehicle conflicts, and crowded intersections expose pedestrians and cyclists. Growth in micromobility increases last-mile exposure, and insurance gaps mean crashes can carry high personal costs.

Reducing harm will require safer dispatch metrics and ETAs, speed management, protected curb and bike infrastructure, and clear, status-based coverage so the right policy pays when a crash occurs.

About The Texas Law Dog

The Texas Law Dog represents injured gig workers, delivery riders, rideshare drivers, and other crash victims. We handle cases that require sorting out platform coverage or fighting bad-faith claim denials and coordinate UM, UIM, and MedPay.

Founded in 2018 by Matthew E. Aulsbrook, the firm uses real insurance insight on every case. Aulsbrook owned insurance agencies before beginning his career in law and knows how carriers value and deny claims. His father was also a career trucker, which gives our firm practical knowledge of transport safety and crash causes.

That mix helps our Texas personal injury lawyers protect delivery riders and rideshare drivers facing app deadlines, tight drop zones, and confusing insurance gaps.

The Most Dangerous States for Gig & Delivery Drivers in 2026