Study says Walton County among 10 most dangerous for auto crashes. County disagrees

Collin Bestor, Northwest Florida Daily News
Updated ·2 min read

Editors Note: This story has been updated to provide comment from the Walton County Sheriff's Office.

WALTON COUNTY — According to a recent study by a Florida law firm, Walton County is the 10th most dangerous county for drivers in the country. But the Walton County Sheriff's Office takes issue with the numbers.

Using data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the law offices of Anidjar & Levine, a statewide personal injury practice, researched counties with a population greater than 50,000 and analyzed the total number of deaths caused by car crashes between 2018 and 2021.

During those four years, 132 people died in traffic incidents in Walton County.

The data was then scaled to each county's population size using 2020 census data. In that year, Walton County had a population of 75,306, and the study calculated that there were 17.53 car crash fatalities per 10,000 people in Walton County.

Using those numbers, the study ranked Walton as the second most dangerous county for fatal accidents in Florida, behind Putnam County, which ranked first at 21.14 deaths per 10,000 people.

In 2022, NHTSA data showed that the rate of accidents in Walton County fell 6.63% from the previous year.

Walton County data

On Wednesday, the Walton County Sheriff's Office said the study's data is skewed because it does not reflect the county's large number of tourists. As the WCSO noted, Walton County sees an influx of 4 million to 5 million tourists annually.

The Sheriff's Office said the benchmark, which uses only the county's permanent residents, doesn't consider the total number of people on the area's roads.

The Northwest Florida Daily News received data from the department provided by Signal4Analytics, which receives all traffic crash reports from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. When adjusted for the tourist influx, the department argues, the fatality rate would drop significantly. Using the Signal4Analytics data and adding 4.5 million to Walton's population brought the traffic fatalities per 10,000 people to 0.29.

The law firm's study did not adjust for tourism in any of the cities on the list.

By comparison to neighboring counties with a similar influx of visitors:

  • Okaloosa County had 154 traffic fatalities from 2018 to 2021 and a 2020 population of 212,820, for 7.2 fatalities per 10,000. Adjusted for 7.5 million visitors in 2021, its fatalities per 10,000 drops to 0.2.

  • In Bay County, there were 138 traffic fatalities during the same period. With a 2020 population of 171,322, its rate per 10,000 would be 8.05. Adjusted for 4 million average annual visitors, its fatalities per 10,000 people would be 0.33.

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Study says Walton County roads are the 10th most dangerous in US