Lee County recorded 2,502 reportable traffic crashes from 2017 through 2025, by The Lee Daily Register’s count from the state’s public Virginia Roads crash records. Twenty-seven people died and 1,046 were injured. More than half of the crashes happened on one family of roads: U.S. 58, Alternate U.S. 58 and Business U.S. 58.
How the count was built
The Virginia Department of Transportation publishes the file with permission from the DMV, which runs the state’s crash database, according to the dataset description. It also warns that the newest entries are preliminary. We pulled every record coded to Lee County, then added the separate records for the towns of Jonesville, Pennington Gap and St. Charles. Without the towns the file holds 2,147 crashes.
With the towns, the yearly numbers line up with the DMV’s published tables. Adding the nine yearly lines in the DMV’s Traffic Crash Facts reports gives 2,500 crashes, 27 deaths and 1,046 injuries for Lee County. Each year matches within one crash. The DMV tables list counties and cities, not towns. A “reportable” crash, the DMV’s glossary says, happens on a public highway and involves a death, an injury or property damage above $1,500.
We left 2026 out. The file has 109 Lee County crashes dated Jan. 1 through July 29, fewer than in the same stretch of any earlier year (131 to 169), and, as of Oct. 29, no Lee County entries after July 29.
Nine years, no clear trend
| Year | Crashes | Deaths | People injured |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 301 | 3 | 172 |
| 2018 | 272 | 5 | 114 |
| 2019 | 284 | 1 | 113 |
| 2020 | 293 | 4 | 121 |
| 2021 | 269 | 1 | 81 |
| 2022 | 247 | 3 | 85 |
| 2023 | 279 | 4 | 108 |
| 2024 | 279 | 2 | 103 |
| 2025 | 278 | 4 | 149 |
Crashes stayed between 247 and 301 a year, and deaths between one and five. The one change worth noting is injuries: 2025 had almost the same number of crashes as 2024 but 149 injured people, up from 103.
Where the crashes pile up
Grouping the records by route shows how much of the county’s trouble sits on U.S. 58. Together its three versions account for 1,284 crashes, or 51 percent, and 16 of the 26 crashes in which someone died.
| Route | Crashes | Share | Fatal | Severe injury |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. 58 | 703 | 28.1% | 8 | 26 |
| Alternate U.S. 58 | 519 | 20.7% | 7 | 21 |
| U.S. 421 | 188 | 7.5% | 2 | 15 |
| U.S. 23 | 141 | 5.6% | 0 | 10 |
| Business U.S. 58 | 62 | 2.5% | 1 | 4 |
| All other roads | 889 | 35.5% | 8 | 57 |
Crash counts follow traffic as much as danger. Among the four busiest routes, U.S. 421 had the highest share of crashes that turned serious: 17 of its 188 (9.0 percent) killed or severely injured someone, against 6.4 percent countywide. U.S. 23 had 141 crashes and no deaths, all logged within a span of about four mileposts.
The sharpest cluster is in Pennington Gap. Two one-mile segments of Alternate U.S. 58, mileposts 7 to 9, have 127 crashes, all recorded in the town and 97 of them on East or West Morgan Avenue. That is 5 percent of the county’s crashes in about two miles of road. Fifty-eight were rear-end crashes, 46 percent of the segment’s total, against 29.5 percent of all crashes in Virginia. The segment produced 58 injured people and one death. Pennington Gap’s town total hit a nine-year high of 36 crashes in 2025.
Single cars, deer and dark roads
Lee County’s crashes look different from the state’s. Single-vehicle crashes made up 63.9 percent of Lee’s total, compared with 29.2 percent statewide. Crashes into a fixed object off the road were 42.6 percent, against 19.2 percent. Deer were involved in 389 crashes, or 15.5 percent, against 5.1 percent statewide, and 156 of them came in November and December. Darkness was a factor in 36.9 percent of Lee’s crashes and 28.8 percent of the state’s.
Timing is less dramatic. The four hours from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. held 616 crashes (24.6 percent), with the 6 p.m. hour the busiest at 161. Wednesday through Friday had 1,207 crashes, nearly twice the 622 on Saturday and Sunday combined, and December was the worst month with 303.
Fatal crashes compared with the state
Fatal crashes were 1.04 percent of Lee’s total, against 0.68 percent for Virginia, and crashes with a death or severe injury were 6.4 percent against 5.5 percent. Using the DMV’s licensed-driver counts, we calculate 0.21 deaths per 1,000 licensed drivers a year in Lee over the nine years, against 0.15 for the state. The DMV’s 2025 table lists 0.28 for Lee and 0.14 statewide. With 27 deaths in nine years, a single crash moves those rates noticeably.
The records carry an “unbelted” flag. It appears in 15 of Lee’s 26 fatal crashes (58 percent) and 40 percent of fatal or severe-injury crashes, versus 42 percent and 23 percent across Virginia.
What the file can’t show
The records give a location, time, road and a set of yes-or-no flags. They do not give a cause, a speed limit or how many vehicles use each road, so a busy highway will always lead a count like this one. We used only totals, with no names or addresses. Route labels come from VDOT’s road-referencing field, and the counts will shift if the state revises older entries.
