If a crash just upended your week, you are not dealing with a rare event. Chicago logged more than 109,000 reported traffic crashes in 2025, down slightly from 112,055 the year before.12 That works out to roughly 300 crashes a day inside the city limits alone. This page pulls together the local numbers, the roads where crashes concentrate, how the city polices its streets, and the Illinois rules that shape what happens after.
What the Chicago numbers actually say
Chicago's crash records come from the Chicago Police Department and are published on the city's open data portal, which is also the source behind our monthly and annual Chicago crash reports.31 In 2025 those records show 94 people killed on city streets, down from 123 in 2024, along with close to 25,000 people injured.12 The direction is encouraging. The totals are still enormous.
Pedestrians absorbed a heavy share of the harm. Of the people killed in 2025, 33 were on foot, and another 2,745 pedestrians were hurt.1 Cyclists were injured 1,809 times, with two riders killed.1
Zoom out to Cook County and the scale is hard to overstate. The Illinois Department of Transportation counted 164,559 crashes in Cook County in 2024, including 333 fatal crashes and 31,456 injury crashes, more than any other county in the state.4 Statewide, Illinois recorded 303,913 crashes and 1,178 deaths that year, roughly 833 crashes every day.4 Speed was a factor in 45.3% of the state's fatal crashes.4
The roads where crashes pile up
Some streets show up again and again. Using the city's 2025 crash records, the arterials with the most reported crashes were Western Avenue with 3,118, Pulaski Road with 2,478, Cicero Avenue with 2,409, and Ashland Avenue with 2,322.3 Halsted Street (2,012) and Kedzie Avenue (1,989) followed close behind, and northbound DuSable Lake Shore Drive logged 1,154 crashes on its own.3 Western Avenue is one of the city's longest and busiest arterials, which is part of why it tops the list.3
None of that is random. These long north-south and diagonal arterials carry heavy traffic, mix fast-moving cars with people walking and biking, and sit at the center of Chicago's Vision Zero work, the city's plan to end traffic deaths that CDOT runs alongside the Department of Public Health, the Police Department, and the Fire Department.5 They are the corridors where a routine left turn or a rush-hour merge turns into an injury claim.
Chicago's hit-and-run problem
One number stands apart. Nearly a third of all Chicago crashes in 2025, about 32,900 of them, were hit-and-runs.13 If the driver who hit you took off, that is frustratingly common here, and it changes how you protect yourself. Illinois law requires any driver in a crash that injures someone or damages a vehicle to stop, give their name, address, and registration, and render reasonable assistance to anyone hurt, including arranging a ride to a doctor or hospital if the injury makes that necessary.6 Get the plate, the direction of travel, and any camera or witness you can before the trail goes cold.
Cameras, speed, and enforcement
Chicago leans hard on automated enforcement. As of the end of 2024 the city ran 300 red light cameras at 149 intersections and 162 speed cameras across 85 Children's Safety Zones, the areas within one-eighth of a mile of a school or park.7 Speed camera tickets run $35 for going 6 to 10 mph over the limit and $100 for 11 mph or more.7
The safety case is measurable. At the 149 red light camera intersections, CDOT reported 524 fewer angle ("T-bone") crashes in 2024 than in 2005, a 57% drop, along with 2,391 fewer crashes of all types.7 Average speeds at camera sites fell from 25.05 mph to 20.83 mph, and a University of Illinois at Chicago study found the cameras cut expected fatal and serious-injury crashes by about 15%.7 The pattern holds nationally: the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found red light cameras lowered the fatal red light running crash rate in large cities by 21%.8 Angle crashes matter because they strike the side of a vehicle, where the least steel sits between the impact and the people inside.
What to do after a crash in Chicago
First, get somewhere safe and call 911 if anyone is hurt. In Illinois a crash has to be reported when it causes injury, death, or more than $1,500 in property damage, and that threshold drops to $500 if any driver is uninsured.4 Officers who respond will document the scene, but you should too.
Photograph the vehicles, the street, the signals, and any damage before cars are moved. Trade names, plates, and insurance details with the other driver. If you feel sore or shaken, get checked by a doctor the same day. Adrenaline hides injuries, and a same-day record ties your treatment to the crash. Keep the crash report number, and write down what you remember while it is fresh.
Deadlines and rules that decide your claim
Two Illinois rules matter more than most people expect. First, the clock. You generally have two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit under 735 ILCS 5/13-202, and shorter deadlines can apply when a city or public agency is involved.9 Miss it and even a strong case can be thrown out on timing alone.
Second, Illinois divides the blame by percentage. Under the state's modified comparative negligence rule, you can still recover money if you were partly to blame, but your award drops by your share of the fault, and you recover nothing once your share climbs past 50%.10 That is why the other driver's insurer works so hard to pin fault on you.
It helps to know the coverage floor. Illinois requires every driver to carry at least $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for bodily injury, $20,000 for property damage, and matching uninsured-motorist coverage of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash.11 Those minimums are thin, so uninsured and underinsured drivers are a genuine risk after a serious wreck. If your losses run past what the at-fault driver carries, or you are weighing whether to handle a claim on your own, you can compare local options through the legal directory.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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ThatCarHitMe.com, Chicago, IL Crash Report, 2025 vs 2024. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/2025-annual-report
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ThatCarHitMe.com, Chicago, IL Crash Report, 2024 vs 2023. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/2024-annual-report
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City of Chicago Data Portal, Traffic Crashes - Crashes (dataset 85ca-t3if). https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Traffic-Crashes-Crashes/85ca-t3if
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Illinois Department of Transportation, 2024 Illinois Crash Facts & Statistics. https://idot.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idot/documents/transportation-system/resources/safety/crash-reports/crash-facts/2024-crash-facts.pdf
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Chicago Department of Transportation, Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan (2017). https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/sites/complete-streets/pdfs/17_0612%20VZ%20Action%20Plan_FOR%20WEB.pdf
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Illinois General Assembly, 625 ILCS 5/11-403 (duty to give information and render aid). https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Fulltext?DocName=062500050K11-403
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Chicago Department of Transportation, 2024 City of Chicago Automated Enforcement Program Annual Report. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/Red%20Light%20Cameras/2025/2024_AE_Report_DRAFT_v5.pdf
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Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Red light running. https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running
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Illinois General Assembly, 735 ILCS 5/13-202 (limitation of personal injury actions). https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Fulltext?DocName=073500050K13-202
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Illinois General Assembly, 735 ILCS 5/2-1116 (comparative fault). https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Fulltext?DocName=073500050K2-1116
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Illinois Department of Insurance, Auto Insurance Shopping Guide. https://idoi.illinois.gov/consumers/consumerinsurance/auto-insurance-shopping-guide.html