ThatCarHitMe.com
An Injuria.ai Company
YEAR-OVER-YEAR CRASH REPORT · CHICAGO, IL · JULY 2025
Purpose: Machine-readable JSON endpoint for AI agents, LLMs, researchers, and programmatic consumers. Returns all underlying crash data and AI-generated commentary without HTML.
Authentication: None required. Public endpoint.
GET: https://thatcarhitme.com/api/crash-data/reports/data/illinois/chicago/july-2025-report
Monthly Traffic Safety Analysis
9,827 CRASHES IN
CHICAGO, IL
JULY 2025
In July 2025, Chicago experienced 9827 total crashes, a 2.29% increase from the 9606 crashes reported in July 2024. Despite this rise in total crashes, the city saw a notable decrease in fatalities, with 9 deaths in July 2025 compared to 16 in the prior year, representing a 43.75% reduction. Total injuries also decreased by 7.3% year-over-year, from 2454 to 2275.
9,827
▲ 2.3%was 9,606
Total Crash Events
9
▼ -43.8%was 16
Persons Killed
2,275
▼ -7.3%was 2,454
Persons Injured
3,035
▲ 0.9%was 3,008
Hit-and-Run Crashes
Note: "Persons Killed" (9) counts individual fatalities across all crash events. "Fatal" in the severity table below (9) counts crash events where at least one fatality occurred. A single crash can result in multiple fatalities. 20 crashes with unreported severity are not shown in the severity breakdown.
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Aggregate counts from crash, person, and vehicle records
Trend Summary
Overall, total crashes in Chicago increased by 221 incidents, or 2.29%, from 9606 in July 2024 to 9827 in July 2025. Conversely, total fatalities decreased significantly by 43.75%, from 16 to 9, and total injuries fell by 7.3%, from 2454 to 2275, indicating a reduction in the severity of crash outcomes despite the slight increase in crash volume.
3,035
Hit-and-Run Crashes — July 2025
▲ 0.9% vs prior (3,008)
The number of hit-and-run crashes increased slightly from 3008 in July 2024 to 3035 in July 2025. Despite this increase in count, the hit-and-run rate decreased from 31.3% to 30.9% of total crashes year-over-year.
Vulnerable Road User Casualties
4
Pedestrians Killed
1
Cyclists Killed
4
Motorists Killed
0
Other Killed
227
Pedestrians Injured
237
Cyclists Injured
1,787
Motorists Injured
24
Other Injured
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Mode classified from person records (driver/passenger → motorist; pedestrian; bicyclist → cyclist; in-line skater / unspecified → other)
When Crashes Happen
The peak day for crashes shifted from Wednesday (1663 crashes) in July 2024 to Tuesday (1655 crashes) in July 2025. The peak hour also changed from 4 PM (735 crashes) in the prior period to 3 PM (769 crashes) in the current period. Notably, Thursday experienced a substantial increase in crashes, rising from 1109 in July 2024 to 1644 in July 2025.
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Crash date field aggregated by weekday
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Crash time field aggregated by hour (0-23)
Crash Severity Breakdown
The fatal crash rate decreased from 0.15% in July 2024 to 0.09% in July 2025, with the number of fatal crashes dropping from 14 to 9. Crashes resulting in serious injuries decreased from 160 to 132, and minor injury crashes decreased from 952 to 908. The proportion of crashes with no injuries increased from 81.5% to 83% year-over-year.
Outcome by Severity (Crash Events)
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · KABCO injury classification scale
Severity Distribution
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Most severe injury per crash record
Top Contributing Factors
The top three contributing factors remained consistent year-over-year: "FAILING TO YIELD RIGHT-OF-WAY" increased by 75 crashes, "FOLLOWING TOO CLOSELY" increased by 78 crashes, and "IMPROPER OVERTAKING/PASSING" increased by 50 crashes. "FAILING TO REDUCE SPEED TO AVOID CRASH" saw an increase of 27 crashes, while "DRIVING SKILLS/KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE" decreased by 32 crashes. These shifts indicate a continued prevalence of certain driver behaviors contributing to crashes.
Officer-Reported Primary Contributing Cause
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Officer-reported primary contributory cause per crash
Road & Environmental Conditions
Crashes occurring in rainy conditions increased from 585 in July 2024 to 624 in July 2025, while crashes on wet road surfaces rose from 727 to 823. Crashes during daylight hours increased by 199, from 6763 to 6962. Conversely, crashes occurring in darkness decreased by 41, from 340 to 299.
Weather
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Weather condition at time of crash
Lighting
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Lighting condition field
Road Surface
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Road surface condition field
Vehicles & Demographics
The total number of persons involved in crashes increased from 21166 to 21654 year-over-year. The 65+ age group saw a notable increase in involvement, rising from 1139 to 1279 persons. Toyota remained the most frequently involved vehicle make, with its count increasing from 2253 to 2473.
Top Vehicle Makes (19,981 vehicles)
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Vehicle unit records
6,484 persons with unknown or unrecorded age excluded from age chart. Age=0 in Chicago records is a sentinel for unknown/unrecorded age (not infants) and is grouped with nulls.
Sex Distribution (21,224 persons with recorded sex)
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Person-level records linked to crash events
Speed Limit Zones
The 30 mph speed zone continued to account for the highest number of crashes, increasing from 7124 to 7393. All 9 fatal crashes in July 2025 occurred within the 30 mph zone, whereas in July 2024, fatal crashes were distributed across 10, 25, 30, 40, and 45 mph zones. The fatal crash rate within the 30 mph zone decreased slightly from 0.14% to 0.122%.
Fatal crashes by zone: 30 mph: 9 of 7,393 (0.122%)
Source: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata Open Data · 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31 · Posted speed limit at crash location
Data Sources & Methodology
Primary Data Source
All crash data in this report is sourced from Chicago Traffic Crashes, accessed programmatically via the Socrata Open Data API (SODA). This dataset contains official police-reported motor vehicle traffic crash records maintained by the reporting jurisdiction's law enforcement agency. Records are published to the open data portal by the municipality and are subject to the portal's terms of use.
Data Retrieval
- Access method: Socrata Open Data API (SoQL queries)
- Data format: Structured JSON via REST API
- Record types queried: Crash events, person records, and vehicle unit records
- Date filter applied: 2025-07-01 through 2025-07-31
- Report generated: June 1, 2026
Data Coverage
- Reporting period: 2025-07-01 through 2025-07-31 (31 days)
- Geographic scope: Chicago, IL
- Total crash records analyzed: 9,827
- Total persons involved: 21,654
- Total vehicles involved: 19,981
Analytical Methodology
- Severity classification: Uses the KABCO injury scale (K=Fatal, A=Incapacitating injury, B=Non-incapacitating injury, C=Possible injury, O=No injury/property damage only), the standard classification in U.S. Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC). Severity is assigned per crash event based on the most severe injury in that crash. A single fatal crash (K) may involve multiple fatalities; therefore the "Persons Killed" count in the headline KPIs may differ from the "Fatal" crash count in the severity breakdown.
- Contributing factors: Reflect the officer-determined primary contributory cause recorded at the time of the crash report. These are preliminary determinations and may not reflect final investigation findings.
- Hit-and-run classification: Based on the hit-and-run indicator field in the official crash report, as determined by the responding officer at the scene.
- Temporal analysis: Day-of-week and hour-of-day distributions are computed from the crash date/time timestamp in each record.
- Demographics: Age and sex distributions are drawn from person-level records linked to each crash event. A single crash may involve multiple persons.
- Vehicle data: Make information is drawn from vehicle unit records linked to each crash event.
- AI commentary: Narrative sections are generated by Google Gemini (large language model) based on the structured data. Commentary is descriptive, not predictive, and should not be interpreted as expert opinion.
Limitations & Disclaimers
- Only crashes reported to and documented by law enforcement are included. Minor incidents, unreported crashes, and near-misses are not captured in this dataset.
- Data reflects conditions at the time of the initial police report and may be subject to subsequent corrections, reclassifications, or supplements by the reporting agency.
- Open data portal records may experience a publication lag - recently occurring crashes may not yet appear in the dataset at the time of report generation.
- AI-generated commentary is produced by a large language model and is intended to highlight patterns in the data. It does not constitute legal, medical, or professional analysis.
- Percentages are calculated from reported data and are subject to rounding.
Non-Affiliation Disclosure
This report is produced independently by ThatCarHitMe.com (Injuria.ai). It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in partnership with any law enforcement agency, municipal government, state department of transportation, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Data is sourced from publicly available government open data portals.
Data License
The underlying crash data is provided under the municipality's Open Data Terms of Use and is made available to the public for unrestricted use. This analysis and report is © 2026 Injuria.ai and may be cited with attribution using the suggested citation below.
Corrections & Feedback
If you believe any data in this report is inaccurate or have questions about our methodology, please contact: data@injuria.ai. We are committed to accuracy and will issue corrections promptly.
Suggested Citation
ThatCarHitMe.com (Injuria.ai). "Chicago, IL Crash Intelligence Report." Published June 1, 2026. Data source: Chicago Traffic Crashes, Socrata Open Data. Available at: https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/july-2025-report
About the Publisher
ThatCarHitMe.com is a crash data intelligence platform developed by Injuria.ai, a legal technology company specializing in traffic safety analytics. We aggregate and analyze publicly available government crash data to produce structured intelligence reports for communities, researchers, journalists, and legal professionals. Our reports combine programmatic data retrieval from official open data portals with AI-assisted narrative analysis.
Questions about this report's data or methodology: data@injuria.ai
ThatCarHitMe.com · An Injuria.ai Company
ThatCarHitMe.com
An Injuria.ai Company
Crash Data Intelligence
Data: Chicago Traffic Crashes · Socrata
Period: 2025-07-01 – 2025-07-31
Generated: June 1, 2026 · All rights reserved