Table 1.05 personal injury crashes, statewide
66.4%of Missouri's 34,820 personal injury crashes in 2023 were a collision with another motor vehicle in transport: 23,119 crashes.
Picture the crash that sent you to this page. For most readers it was not a tree, a ditch, or a deer. It was another car, moving, and then suddenly not where you expected it to be. The Missouri State Highway Patrol has a name for that crash type, motor vehicle in transport, and in 2023, the latest year it has published, it was the type behind about two of every three personal injury crashes in the state.
What the number counts
Table 1.05 of the Traffic Safety Compendium sorts every crash reported into MOCARS by crash type and by severity. The types read like a list of things a vehicle can run into or do: an animal, a fixed object, a pedestrian, a parked motor vehicle, an overturn, and a motor vehicle in transport, meaning another vehicle that was moving on the road rather than parked. The severity columns are fatal, personal injury, and property damage only.
In the personal injury column, 23,119 of 34,820 crashes were the moving-vehicle type. That is 66.4%. The next largest type, a fixed object, accounts for 7,009 injury crashes, 20.1%. Everything else, overturns, pedestrians, parked cars, animals, and eleven smaller categories, shares what is left.
Chart personal injury crashes by crash type, Missouri 2023
The six largest crash types for personal injury crashes, and the remaining eleven types added together. Total: 34,820.What it is not
It is not a count of rear-end crashes. Motor vehicle in transport covers a car into the back of another car, and it also covers the side impact at an intersection, the sideswipe on a lane change, and the head-on. Table 1.05 does not split them, so this page does not either.
It is not a count of whiplash. The table records the crash type and the severity on the report. It does not record a diagnosis, a body part, or how badly anyone was hurt beyond the column the crash falls in.
It is not the St. Louis metro. These are statewide figures. And it is not every crash: a tap in a parking lot that nobody reported is in no table at all.
| Crash type | Fatal | Injury | Share of injury | Property only | All crashes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motor Vehicle in Transport | 372 | 23,119 | 66.4% | 68,076 | 91,567 |
| Fixed Object | 291 | 7,009 | 20.1% | 17,790 | 25,090 |
| Overturn | 83 | 1,497 | 4.3% | 1,051 | 2,631 |
| Pedestrian | 118 | 1,192 | 3.4% | 85 | 1,395 |
| Parked Motor Vehicle | 4 | 721 | 2.1% | 7,829 | 8,554 |
| Animal | 4 | 429 | 1.2% | 3,809 | 4,242 |
| Pedalcycle | 8 | 422 | 1.2% | 88 | 518 |
| Other Object | 5 | 171 | 0.5% | 1,322 | 1,498 |
| Other Non Collision | 3 | 86 | 0.2% | 395 | 484 |
| Fell/Jumped from MV | 8 | 73 | 0.2% | 6 | 87 |
| Working Motor Vehicle | 0 | 49 | 0.1% | 190 | 239 |
| Fire/Explosion | 1 | 16 | 0.0% | 247 | 264 |
| Animal Drawn Veh/Animal Ridden Trans | 4 | 13 | 0.0% | 10 | 27 |
| Jackknife | 0 | 10 | 0.0% | 110 | 120 |
| Railway Vehicle | 4 | 9 | 0.0% | 25 | 38 |
| Immersion | 0 | 2 | 0.0% | 21 | 23 |
| Cargo/Equip Loss/Shift | 0 | 2 | 0.0% | 60 | 62 |
| Total | 905 | 34,820 | 101,114 | 136,839 |
Missouri State Highway Patrol, Traffic Safety Compendium 2023, table 1.05. Crash types as the Patrol names them. Share of injury crashes computed by this desk.
Down the other columns
The same crash type is 67.3% of the property damage only crashes, 68,076 of 101,114, so vehicle-into-vehicle is also the everyday fender bender. It is a smaller share of the deaths: 372 of 905 fatal crashes, 41.1%. Fixed objects account for 291 fatal crashes, 32.2%, and pedestrian crashes for 118, 13.0%, far more than their share of injury crashes.
Read plainly, the moving-vehicle crash is the one people most often walk away from, sore or not. That matches what this guide hears about. The crash that fills an emergency department's trauma bay is a different table row.
What it means for a sore neck
The mechanism the rest of this guide describes needs a push from outside the body: the seat drives the torso forward and the head lags behind on the neck, then catches up. A vehicle striking yours is the ordinary way that push arrives. The table cannot say how many of these 23,119 crashes hurt a neck, and it cannot say which direction the hit came from. What it does say is that this is the common injury crash in Missouri, not an unusual one.
Two things follow for a person reading this at an odd hour. First, the severity on the report is a snapshot. A crash written up as property damage only can still be the crash your neck is reporting on two days later, which is the seventy-two-hour lag this guide keeps coming back to. Second, the direction of impact matters to the exam, and the report may not hold it. Tell the clinician whether you were hit from behind, from the side, or head on, and whether your head was turned.
If you have chest pain, a sudden severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, trouble speaking, a loss of bowel or bladder control, or a head injury with vomiting or worsening confusion, go to the emergency room now. Otherwise, the next useful step is an exam this week.
The common crash
Common is not the same as nothing.
A documented exam this week protects your health and your options. Call the nearest office, say it was a car crash, give the date and the direction of the hit, and take the earliest opening.
Missouri Injury Clinic, Joseph L. Hollingsworth, DC. Hazelwood, Tesson Ferry, and O'Fallon. Every office is closed 12 to 2.
Sources
- Missouri State Highway Patrol, Traffic Safety Compendium 2023, table 1.05, "2023 Missouri Crashes by Type and Crash Severity". mshp.dps.missouri.gov, Traffic Safety Compendium. Figures pulled September 13, 2026.
These are crashes reported into MOCARS, the state's crash reporting system, and published by the Patrol. 2023 is the latest year the Patrol has published. Percentages on this page are computed by this desk from the counts in the table named beside them.
The Patrol's tables do not record whiplash, neck injuries, or any diagnosis. Where this page connects a count to the neck, that connection is the desk's reading, stated as such.