Editorial & Legal Accuracy Notice (Louisiana)
Updated September 23, 2026. Stephen Babcock, Louisiana Bar No. 26792. This article discusses public crash data and general legal issues. It is not advice about a particular collision.
A number can be accurate and still be misused. Lincoln Parish had 41 fatal traffic crashes in federal records from 2020 through 2024. That tells us how many qualifying crashes were recorded. It does not tell us which road was most dangerous or who caused a particular wreck.
Lincoln Parish and Ruston, year by year
The parish recorded 44 deaths in those 41 crashes. Twelve of the crashes, involving 13 deaths, were coded within Ruston. The city figures are a subset of the parish figures. Adding the two columns together would count the Ruston crashes twice.
| Year | Lincoln Parish crashes | Lincoln Parish deaths | Ruston crashes | Ruston deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 12 | 15 | 2 | 3 |
| 2022 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| 2023 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| 2024* | 10 | 10 | 4 | 4 |
| Five-year total | 41 | 44 | 12 | 13 |
*The 2024 figures come from NHTSA’s first Annual Report File and may change when the final file is released. The 2020 through 2023 figures are from final files.
Four fatal crashes in the parish in 2023 became ten in the provisional 2024 file. That is a change in the count, but five years of small local numbers cannot establish why it happened. Ruston had no coded fatal crashes in 2020 and five in 2022. Converting those figures into dramatic percentages would obscure how few events are involved.
What the location and time codes show
Of the 41 parish crashes, 24 occurred between 6:00 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. Twenty-three carried a dark-lighting code, and 23 were coded rural. These categories overlap. A crash at night can also be rural and coded dark, so the counts should not be added or treated as separate groups.
I-20 appeared in 13 parish records. In Ruston’s 12-crash subset, US-80 appeared in four records and I-20 in three. That does not make any one road the most dangerous. To compare risk, we would need a sound measure of how much traffic used each road, over what distance and at what times. These crash files alone do not supply that comparison.
A parish statistic will not prove a family’s case
If a crash happened on I-20, the important questions are what happened at that location, to those vehicles, on that day. The answer may come from photographs, roadway measurements, vehicle damage, event data, witness accounts, camera footage, or the investigating agency’s records. A broad nighttime count cannot prove that someone was speeding, distracted, impaired, or responsible for that crash.
Families dealing with a fatal collision also need to identify who may legally bring a claim and preserve records that show the person’s losses. Our Ruston crash guide addresses the immediate steps. The Ruston wrongful death page explains the separate family and claim questions. Save what you have, including the report number, tow location, photographs, and names of witnesses. A family should not have to assemble a complete investigation before making a call.
How we counted
We used the public accident files in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, commonly called FARS. The analysis selected Louisiana records coded to Lincoln Parish and then identified the subset with Ruston as the city. It counted one record per fatal crash and used the FATALS field for the number of deaths. NHTSA’s data access page links to the underlying files. Its 2024 release notes describe that file’s status.
FARS covers qualifying motor-vehicle traffic crashes with a death within 30 days. It does not count every injury crash, minor collision, or insurance claim. Its city code is a data field, not a person’s mailing address or a definition of the wider Ruston area. The figures here are descriptive counts, not a fault finding or a ranking of road safety. This analysis uses the public federal files, not Louisiana data subject to the protections of 23 U.S.C. § 407.
If your family is dealing with a fatal or serious crash in Lincoln Parish, call our Ruston office at (318) 777-5000 or send us a short account of what happened. We can discuss what needs to be preserved while the records and vehicles can still be found.