Denver's two traffic-death counts

The Vision Zero page, read on 29 September 2026, said 94 people died in traffic in 2025 and 47 had died so far in 2026. The same page points readers to the open data catalog as the more comprehensive source.

The open crash file records 41 deaths in 2025 and 26 so far in 2026. It records 463 pedestrian crashes in 2025 and 0 pedestrian deaths. The Denver Gazette, citing DOTI, reported 35 people killed while walking in 2025, and 93 traffic deaths in total.

The page and the Gazette differ by one. Both are kept. Neither is added to the file. The gap is the finding. It is not a claim that either office invented a figure.

Pedestrian crashes in the file: 404 in 2021, 374 in 2022, 522 in 2023, 494 in 2024, 463 in 2025, and 357 so far in 2026. Pedestrian deaths in that file: 15, then 3, then 0 from 2023 on. The deaths the file does record in 2025 are people in motor vehicles (26) and on motorcycles (15).

43 percent of the 2025 pedestrian crashes with coordinates fall within 30 meters of the High Injury Network. The buffer is a choice. A crash near the line is not a death. Serious injuries disagree too: the file sums to 420 in 2024 and 432 in 2025. The Gazette reported 410 and 356. They are not subtracted.

Eight of those 35 pedestrian deaths were on the freeway, DOTI told the Gazette. That share does not explain a file with 0 pedestrian deaths, or a total gap of about 50. A coding change, a different records system, or interstate crashes reported by Colorado State Patrol are hypotheses. They are not findings.

Code, the workbook, the map, and the citation note: https://github.com/jasonpellerin-aisolutionist/denver-two-death-counts . The Tableau workbook opens locally. A public viz link will be added after it is saved to Tableau Public.