The Idaho Office of Highway Safety announced on September 11 that 90 people died on Idaho roads between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year, up from 88 during the same period in 2025. Local coverage repeated both numbers and moved on. But the same release carried a second figure that sits in direct tension with the first: Idaho recorded only 150 traffic deaths through Labor Day, down from 174 at the same point a year earlier.
Deaths inside the summer window rose while the year as a whole got 14 percent safer. Both numbers are real. The way to hold them together is arithmetic nobody has published yet: the summer of 2026 was not 100 days long. It was 106.
Seven extra days, and a hidden improvement
Memorial Day fell on May 25 in 2026, and Labor Day on September 7, the longest the traditional window can get. Counted inclusive, that is 106 days. In every year from 2021 through 2025, the window ran 99 days, because Memorial Day landed later, Labor Day earlier, or both. The Idaho Transportation Department published the 2021 through 2025 summer totals in May, and OHS published the 2026 total on September 11, but neither release divided by the number of days those totals accrued over.
Divided out, the picture flips. Summer 2026 ran at 90 deaths per 106 days, or 0.85 deaths per day. Summer 2025 ran at 88 deaths per 99 days, or 0.89 per day. Idaho’s summer roads were about 4.5 percent safer per day this year, not more dangerous. The only reason the raw count climbed is that 2026 gave summer seven more days to accumulate deaths, and seven days at this year’s rate is worth about six deaths by itself.
The rest of the year tells the other half of the story. Subtracting summer from the year-to-date totals leaves 60 deaths across the 144 non-summer days before Memorial Day in 2026, a rate of 0.42 per day. The same stretch of 2025 ran at 0.59 per day. Non-summer roads got roughly 30 percent safer in one year. Summer improved a little. That is why the summer share of Idaho’s deaths has never looked larger.
Put plainly: Idaho did not have a worse summer than last year. It had a longer summer during a year when everything else improved. Summer is still about twice as deadly per day as the rest of the year, and that ratio is widening. The “100 Deadliest Days” label still earns its name. The “up from 88” headline does not.
What the release says
Two more summer deaths than 2025, framed as a rise. Accurate as a raw count across two windows of different lengths.
What the per-day math says
At 2025’s per-day rate, a 106-day summer would have produced about 94 deaths. Ninety is roughly four fewer than that.
The six-year record
| Year | Window | Days | Deaths | Per day | vs. 6-yr avg (0.90/day) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | May 31 – Sept 6 | 99 | 100 | 1.01 | +12% |
| 2022 | May 30 – Sept 5 | 99 | 81 | 0.82 | −9% |
| 2023 | May 29 – Sept 4 | 99 | 93 | 0.94 | +4% |
| 2024 | May 27 – Sept 2 | 99 | 82 | 0.83 | −8% |
| 2025 | May 26 – Sept 1 | 99 | 88 | 0.89 | −1% |
| 2026 | May 25 – Sept 7 | 106 | 90 | 0.85 | −6% |
What the summer actually looked like
The statewide average flattens some brutal local facts. Idaho County recorded six deaths during the window, more than any other county OHS named, and three of them died in a single crash. On June 16, Idaho State Police say a Ford F-150 driver tried to pass another vehicle in a marked no-passing zone on U.S. Highway 12 near Kooskia, crossed the double yellow centerline, and struck three motorcycles head-on. All three riders died at the scene. The driver, a 60-year-old from Colorado Springs, was booked on three counts of vehicular manslaughter.
Eight days earlier in Caldwell, ISP says a GMC pickup ran a stop sign at East Linden Street and South Kimball Avenue and killed Miguel Vasquez, 35, injuring the three juveniles riding with him. The pickup’s driver was arrested after hospital treatment. And on August 18 near Idaho Falls, ISP reports that Courtney Cramer, a 30-year-old Rigby mother of four, failed to yield at a stop sign and was struck driver-side by a Ford F-250. She was not wearing a seat belt, according to the crash release; the Ford’s driver was. She died of her injuries three days later.
Those three crashes map almost exactly onto the contributing circumstances OHS listed for the summer: failure to maintain a lane and crossing the centerline, failure to obey signs and signals, inattention, and failure to wear a seat belt, alongside impairment and speeding. The national pattern matches too. AAA’s review of federal crash data found that more than 30 percent of deaths in crashes involving teen drivers happen inside this same window, about 8 per day nationally versus 7 the rest of the year, and Idaho’s own 2025 crash report found drivers 15 to 19 were 2.1 times as likely to be in a fatal or injury crash.
What the numbers mean if you were hurt this summer
The contributing-circumstance list is not just a safety talking point. It is a rough map of how fault gets argued in an Idaho injury claim, because most of the circumstances on OHS’s list are traffic-law violations, and a violation is the strongest ordinary evidence of negligence. A driver who crosses a double yellow in a no-passing zone, as in Kooskia, or runs a stop sign, as in Caldwell, has given the injured party (or their family) the clearest possible fault case.
That last point deserves emphasis, because it surprises people. Idaho’s own crash data shows unbelted occupants dying at high rates: in 2025, only 70 of the 169 passenger-vehicle occupants over age 7 killed in crashes were wearing seat belts, according to the state’s 2025 crash report. Yet the legislature wrote the seat belt question out of civil cases entirely. If you or a family member were hurt this summer and the belt question is weighing on you, Idaho law says it should not.
Shared fault is the harder case, and the Cramer crash shows why. Her own failure to yield is part of the record, and Idaho’s comparative-fault statute means her estate’s recovery would depend on how that mistake weighs against the other driver’s conduct. That balancing is exactly where the crash report, witness statements, and scene evidence decide whether a family recovers anything. The Advocates’ Boise car accident lawyers and Meridian car accident lawyer resources explain how local crash claims are investigated.
Three limits on what the data can tell a family
First, these are preliminary numbers. OHS revises fatality counts as investigations close: the same office listed summer 2025 at 87 deaths in May and 88 in September. Expect small revisions to the 2026 figures when the full annual report lands.
Second, a criminal charge is not compensation. The Kooskia and Caldwell drivers face vehicular manslaughter cases, which under Idaho Code §18-4006 can carry felony penalties of up to 15 years in prison. A prosecution punishes the driver. It pays the family nothing; the money in these cases comes from the at-fault driver’s liability policy, and Idaho’s minimum coverage is $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, limits that have not changed since 1988. A crash with one fatality and three injured children, like Caldwell’s, reaches that ceiling immediately. (We broke down the full 2025 report, including the per-person cost math, in our 2025 crash report analysis.)
Third, the safest per-day summer since 2024 is still a summer in which Idaho roads ran at more than twice the death rate of the rest of the year, concentrated on rural two-lane roads, in daylight, among riders and drivers who were unbelted, impaired, or crossing lines they should not have crossed. The improvement is real. It is not permission to relax.
Sources and method
2026 summer and year-to-date fatality figures are preliminary and were released by the Idaho Office of Highway Safety on September 11, 2026. Window lengths were computed from the Memorial Day and Labor Day dates for each year, counted inclusive of both endpoints: 99 days each year from 2021 through 2025, 106 days in 2026. Per-day rates, the gap ratios, and the expected-death comparison are our calculations from those published counts.
- Dailyfly News, “Idaho Traffic Deaths Rise During 100 Deadliest Days,” September 11, 2026 (90 summer deaths, 150 year-to-date, contributing circumstances, county counts, Middleton quote).
- Pullman Radio, “Three traffic fatalities reported in Latah County during Idaho’s 100 Deadliest Days,” September 11, 2026.
- Idaho Transportation Department, Office of Highway Safety, “Idaho aims to make this summer the 100 Safest Days,” May 20, 2026 (2021 through 2025 summer totals, seat belt and speeding context).
- Idaho State Police, “Three Motorcyclists Killed in Crash on U.S. Highway 12 Near Kooskia,” June 17, 2026.
- Idaho News (CBS2), “Driver arrested after deadly crash in Caldwell,” June 9, 2026.
- Idaho State Police, “Injury Crash on County Line Road Idaho Falls,” August 19, 2026, and East Idaho News, “Rigby mother of four dies from injuries after severe crash near Idaho Falls,” August 21, 2026.
- AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, “The 100 Deadliest Days: Teen Driver Deaths Jump in Summer Months,” May 29, 2025.
- Idaho Office of Highway Safety, 2025 Idaho Traffic Crash report (Analysis.pdf), and The Advocates, “Idaho’s 2025 Crash Report, Decoded,” August 2026.
- Idaho Code §6-801 (comparative negligence), §49-673(8) (seat belt evidence barred), and §18-4006 (vehicular manslaughter), as published by the Idaho Legislature.