May is Motorcycle Awareness Month, and this year, the numbers that go with it are hard to sit with.
If you ride in Utah, you know what this state offers on two wheels. The canyons above Salt Lake City, the open straightaways cutting through the West Desert, the switchbacks climbing toward the Uintas. It’s genuinely some of the best riding in the country. Which is part of why the 2024 data from the Utah Department of Transportation hit so hard: 53 motorcyclists died on Utah roads last year. That’s the highest number since 1994, a 15-year high, and a number that kept climbing even as state agencies were publicly pushing safety awareness.
Fifty-three people. That’s not a trend line on a chart. Those are real riders with families, jobs, and communities who aren’t coming home.
At AVS Law Group, we work with riders and families who are picking up the pieces after serious crashes. We’ve seen firsthand how quickly an insurance company moves to minimize a claim, how fast evidence disappears, and how much it matters to have someone in your corner who actually knows how to fight these cases. With Motorcycle Awareness Month here, we want to be straight with you about what the data shows and what your options look like if something goes wrong on the road.
Why Did Utah Motorcycle Fatalities Reach a 15-Year High in 2024?
The short answer is that it wasn’t one thing. It was a combination of more riders on the road, more risk-taking, and in a lot of cases, other drivers simply not seeing motorcycles until it was too late.
The bulk of the deaths happened in summer. June through August were brutal, and July 2024 became the single deadliest month in Utah’s recorded traffic history. Most of the fatal crashes were single-vehicle incidents where a rider lost control, typically linked to speed or not adjusting for road conditions on a curve. Protective gear, or the lack of it, kept coming up in crash reports as a factor in how bad the injuries were.
The riders who died skewed young. Many were in their 20s and 30s. And here’s a number worth sitting with: motorcycles make up less than 3% of registered vehicles in Utah, but motorcyclists accounted for 19% of all traffic deaths in 2024. That gap tells you everything about how exposed you are on a bike compared to someone inside a car.
State investigators found that the motorcyclist was at fault in roughly two-thirds of fatal crashes. That’s a number defense attorneys and insurance adjusters will absolutely use if your case ends up in litigation, which is exactly why having a lawyer who knows how to build the full picture of a crash matters so much. Utah uses a modified comparative negligence standard, meaning your compensation can be reduced based on your share of fault, but it doesn’t disappear unless you’re found more than 50% responsible.
One more thing worth flagging: according to a Utah Highway Safety Office five-year analysis, the number of registered motorcycles in Utah more than doubled between 2005 and 2025, going from about 43,000 to nearly 92,000. More bikes, more exposure, and roads that weren’t designed with that growth in mind.
Where in Utah Are Motorcycle Accidents Happening Most Often?
Crashes are happening all over the state, but certain areas keep showing up in the data.
Salt Lake County is at the top of the list, accounting for 26% of all traffic fatalities statewide. The I-15 corridor, State Street, Bangerter Highway, the tangle of on-ramps and merge zones connecting Salt Lake City, Murray, South Salt Lake, and West Valley City are all high-volume, high-speed environments where motorcycle crashes happen regularly. A January 2024 crash at State Street and 5900 South in Murray killed a motorcyclist after a driver was later arrested on suspicion of DUI. That kind of crash is far from rare here.
Utah County comes in second at 12% of statewide fatalities. The I-15 stretch through Provo, Orem, and Lehi has grown faster than its safety infrastructure, and it shows.
Weber County (8%) and Davis County (5%) run along the I-15/I-84 corridor north of Salt Lake. Freeway on-ramps, merge areas, and high-speed lane changes are where crashes cluster in these counties. A 2022 crash on the northbound I-15 merge from US-89 in North Salt Lake turned fatal after a rider lost control and was hit by multiple vehicles in quick succession.
Washington County (6%), anchored by St. George, rounds out the top five. The roads into and out of Zion National Park draw a lot of motorcycle traffic, and the canyon and desert conditions there are genuinely unforgiving if something goes wrong.
Away from the urban centers, the frontier counties have the highest fatality rates per mile driven: Rich, Kane, Wasatch, San Juan, and Wayne. SR-12 through the Grand Staircase, US-89 through Long Valley, and the canyon roads near Moab are spectacular rides that also produce serious crashes in areas where an ambulance might be a long time coming.
Timing matters too. Injury crashes spike between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays. Fatal crashes happen most often on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. If you’re planning a ride in Utah, those patterns are worth knowing.
What Are the Most Common Causes of Motorcycle Accidents in Utah?
Based on state data and the cases we handle at AVS, these are the situations we see over and over:
Speed and loss of control on curves and mountain roads. These are mostly single-vehicle crashes, and they’re common on the canyon routes along the Wasatch Front. Sometimes it’s inexperience. Sometimes it’s a road condition the rider didn’t anticipate. Either way, the outcomes are often catastrophic.
Left-turn collisions where a driver cuts across the path of an oncoming motorcyclist. This is one of the most dangerous crash types for riders and one of the clearest cases of driver fault. The driver simply didn’t see the bike, or misjudged its speed.
Rear-end crashes in slowing traffic. The I-15 corridor through Salt Lake and Utah Counties is especially hazardous when traffic is backing up. Motorcycles stop fast. Not everyone behind them does.
Blind spot and lane-change crashes. A motorcycle is narrower than a car and easier to miss in a mirror. Drivers who don’t physically check before merging create serious danger for riders every day.
DUI and impaired drivers. These crashes are among the most devastating because they’re entirely preventable. The Murray crash mentioned earlier is one example. We’ve handled cases like it, and they never get easier to look at.
What Should You Do After a Motorcycle Accident in Utah?
The decisions you make in the hours and days after a crash have a real impact on what your case looks like down the road. Here’s what actually matters:
Get medical attention right away, even if you feel okay. Adrenaline is real, and it masks pain. Traumatic brain injuries and internal injuries can take time to show up. If you walk away from the scene without getting checked out and symptoms appear later, you’ve already created a gap that an insurance company will try to exploit.
Document everything while it’s fresh. Photos of the scene, road markings, vehicle positions, your gear, your injuries. Get the names and numbers of any witnesses. Write down what you remember while the details are still clear. None of this feels like a priority when you’re in shock, but it matters.
Don’t give a recorded statement to an insurance adjuster before you’ve talked to a lawyer. This is not something to skip. Adjusters are trained to ask questions in ways that can be used against you. You are not required to give a statement on their timeline.
Reach out to a Utah motorcycle accident lawyer before you sign or accept anything. Utah’s personal injury statute of limitations is four years under Utah Code § 78B-2-307, but waiting means evidence gets lost and memories fade. The sooner you have someone working your case, the better your position.
How Can a Utah Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Help You?
A serious motorcycle crash is never just an insurance paperwork problem. There are real legal questions about who was at fault and by how much, what damages you’re entitled to, whether a third party like a road maintenance agency or vehicle manufacturer played a role, and how to properly document both the financial and human cost of what happened.
The team at AVS Law Group doesn’t look at cases the way a settlement mill does. We evaluate what a case is actually worth in litigation, not what an insurance carrier wants to pay before anyone files a lawsuit. Our attorneys have taken thousands of cases to court, including motorcycle crashes, and we don’t shy away from trial when that’s what it takes to get a fair result.
When you work with us, you deal with a trial lawyer directly. Not a case manager, not a rotating cast of paralegals. Someone who knows your case and knows how to fight for it.
We work on contingency, which means you pay nothing unless we recover money for you. If you want to talk through what happened and what your options are, call us for a free consultation.
What Compensation Can I Recover After a Motorcycle Accident in Utah?
It depends on the specifics, but compensation generally falls into two buckets.
Economic damages are the concrete financial losses: medical bills, future treatment costs, lost income, reduced earning capacity going forward, rehabilitation, and property damage to your bike and gear.
Non-economic damages cover what’s harder to put a number on: pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life. In wrongful death cases, that includes loss of companionship and the impact on surviving family members.
In cases involving especially reckless behavior, like a drunk driver or someone who ran from the scene, punitive damages may be on the table as well, though the legal bar for those is higher.
There’s no universal answer to what a case is worth. It depends on your injuries, the evidence, the insurance coverage involved, and how hard someone is willing to fight for you. That’s why the conversation with a lawyer is the right first step, not a Google search.
Is Utah a Fault or No-Fault State for Motorcycle Accidents?
Utah is a no-fault state for car accidents, which means drivers carry personal injury protection (PIP) coverage that pays out regardless of who caused the crash. Motorcycles are not required to carry PIP under Utah law, and most motorcycle policies don’t include it.
What that means in practice is that injured motorcyclists can’t just tap into no-fault benefits the way car accident victims can. You’ll typically need to go after the at-fault driver’s liability insurance directly, or use uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy if the other driver doesn’t have enough coverage.
This is one of the ways motorcycle cases are more legally complicated than car accident cases, and it’s a big reason why having an attorney who understands the difference actually changes outcomes.
Does Utah Have a Helmet Law for Motorcyclists?
Utah doesn’t require helmets for riders 21 and older. Riders under 21 are required to wear one under Utah Code § 41-6a-1503.
Whether you were wearing a helmet or not can come up in litigation as part of a comparative fault argument, particularly if your head or neck was injured. It doesn’t automatically kill your case, but it’s a factor that needs to be handled carefully. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation consistently lists helmet use as one of the most effective ways to survive a crash, and that data does come into play in courtrooms.
If you weren’t helmeted at the time of your crash, don’t assume you have no case. Talk to an attorney before drawing any conclusions.
What Is Lane Splitting and Is It Legal in Utah?
Lane splitting means riding between lanes of moving traffic. For years it was illegal in Utah, but following the record fatality numbers in 2024, the legislature passed a lane-splitting law that took effect in 2025 under specific conditions. Utah also has a lane filtering law allowing motorcycles to move through stopped traffic within certain speed limits.
These changes are genuinely good for rider safety in certain situations. But they also create new legal gray areas. If you were lane splitting at the time of a crash, whether you were within the legal parameters will factor into any fault determination and what you can ultimately recover.
Talk to a Utah Motorcycle Accident Lawyer at AVS Law Group
The 2024 numbers should make anyone paying attention uncomfortable. Fifty-three riders died. More than 38 others were seriously injured. And riding season is already underway.
When a crash happens because a driver didn’t yield, was drunk, or just didn’t bother to check their mirrors before switching lanes, the rider and their family deserve more than a lowball settlement offer. They deserve someone who will actually take the fight seriously.
That’s what we do at AVS Law Group. If you or someone you love was hurt in a motorcycle accident anywhere in Utah, call us. The consultation is free and there’s no obligation.
Call AVS Law Group: 801-876-7771 Schedule a Free Consultation
AVS Law Group (Allred, Vogt & Stuart) serves clients throughout Salt Lake City, Murray, West Valley City, Provo, Ogden, St. George, and all of Utah.
