Key takeaways
- St. Charles County's Strategic Highway Safety Action Plan sets the goal: cut fatal and serious injury crashes 50% by 2030, and eliminate them by 2050.
- Fatal crashes in the county, table 1.13: 24 in 2019, 27 in 2020, 30 in 2021, 30 in 2022 and 22 in 2023.
- Table 1.13 does not separate serious injuries from minor ones, so it cannot track the serious injury half of the goal.
- This desk does not project 2030. It enters each year as the Patrol publishes it.
Most goals about roads are written somewhere far away. This one was written by the county. St. Charles County's Strategic Highway Safety Action Plan, which updates the county's 2015 Strategic Highway Safety Plan and supports Missouri's statewide Show-Me Zero plan, commits the county to halving fatal and serious injury crashes by 2030. This page sets the Patrol's county numbers beside that sentence and is careful about what those numbers can and cannot measure.
The goal, in the county's words
"St. Charles County is committed to providing a safe transportation system for all by reducing fatal and serious injury crashes by 50% by 2030 and eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes by 2050."
St. Charles County, Strategic Highway Safety Action Plan, sccmo.org/2258/Strategic-Highway-Safety-Action-Plan
The Ledger quotes the goal exactly and does not add a baseline year, a target number, or a finish line of its own. How the county measures progress is the county's to say, and its plan is the place to read it.
Table 1.13 / St. Charles County
Fatal crashes, 2019 to 2023
Crashes in which at least one person died, by year. Same numbers in the table below.
What the Patrol's table can show
One half of the goal is visible in table 1.13: fatal crashes. The county reported 24 fatal crashes in 2019, 27 in 2020, 30 in both 2021 and 2022, and 22 in 2023, the latest year the Patrol has published. Across the five years that is 133 fatal crashes.
A fatal crash is a crash in which at least one person died. It is not a count of people killed, because one crash can take more than one life. Table 1.13 counts crashes, which is the same unit the county's goal uses.
Small numbers move. A year with 22 fatal crashes after two years with 30 is welcome news, and it is also the kind of swing that can reverse the next year. This desk does not draw a trend line through five points, and it does not extend one to 2030.
What it cannot show
The other half of the goal is serious injury crashes, and table 1.13 cannot see them. Its personal injury class holds every crash where someone was hurt, from pain reported at the scene to a disabling injury. In 2023 that class held 1,606 crashes in the county. Some of those injuries were serious. The table does not say how many, and this desk will not guess or borrow a statewide share to fill the gap.
When the Ledger can cite a published figure for serious injury crashes in St. Charles County, it will enter it on this page with its source. Until then the honest entry is a blank with a note beside it.
Why a crash-care desk cares about a road goal
Because the goal and the exam are about the same people. A serious crash that never happens is the best outcome on any ledger. For the crashes that still happen, most are neither fatal nor serious: in 2023, 6,317 of the county's 7,945 reported crashes were property damage only, and that number includes drivers who felt fine at the scene and not two mornings later. The county can work on the roads. The person in the crash can work on the week after: get examined, get the findings written down, and leave with a plan.
None of this is commentary on the county's plan, and this desk has no part in it. It reads the plan the way it reads the Patrol's tables, as a published document, cited by name.
How this page will be kept
Each time the Patrol publishes a new compendium year, this page gains a line. The 2024 county table returned no rows when it was checked on September 13, 2026, so 2023 is the latest year entered. The goal sentence stays exactly as the county wrote it.
The full table
| Year | Fatal crashes | Personal injury crashes, all severities | Total crashes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 24 | 1,625 | 8,496 |
| 2020 | 27 | 1,364 | 7,000 |
| 2021 | 30 | 1,521 | 7,991 |
| 2022 | 30 | 1,338 | 6,943 |
| 2023 | 22 | 1,606 | 7,945 |
Sources / checked against the tables
- St. Charles County, Missouri, "Strategic Highway Safety Action Plan," published by the county at https://www.sccmo.org/2258/Strategic-Highway-Safety-Action-Plan. Read 2026-09-13.
- Missouri State Highway Patrol, Missouri Traffic Safety Compendium, table 1.13: "Missouri Crashes by County and Crash Severity", 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 editions. Crashes reported into MOCARS. Traffic Safety Compendium, mshp.dps.missouri.gov. Pulled 2026-09-13; 2023 is the latest year the Patrol has published.
The one entry that matters
Get examined this week at the O'Fallon office
Say it was a crash when you call. The office is at 2163 West Terra Lane, O'Fallon. Closed daily 12 to 2.
This entry is educational and is not medical advice or a diagnosis. It is not legal advice. The crash figures are counts reported to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and say nothing about any clinic, doctor, or office.