Car accident guide and data hub for Miami and Fort Lauderdale

If a crash just upended your week somewhere between Homestead and Deerfield Beach, this page is meant to give you the local facts quickly: how bad the roads here really are, which intersections keep showing up in the data, and the Florida rules that decide what happens next.

South Florida's two big counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, carry some of the heaviest crash volume in the state. Florida logged 381,210 reportable crashes in 2024, and 3,184 people were killed.¹ Of those deaths, 701 were pedestrians, more than a fifth of the total.¹ Miami-Dade alone sees close to 300 traffic deaths in a typical year, with thousands more people seriously hurt, according to the county's Vision Zero program.²

Walking here is especially risky. In the 2026 Dangerous by Design report from Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro ranked 17th among large U.S. metros for pedestrian danger, with 1,062 people killed while walking between 2020 and 2024.³ Statewide, Florida recorded 3,726 pedestrian deaths over that same five-year stretch, a rate of 3.32 per 100,000 residents.³

Where the crashes cluster

The crash data for both counties flows through Signal Four Analytics, the state's crash-mapping system built and run by the University of Florida GeoPlan Center using records from the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles department.⁴ When traffic engineers and reporters dig into that data, a handful of the same locations keep coming back.

A 2017 to 2021 analysis by the traffic-data firm INRIX flagged six South Florida intersections as the region's most dangerous.⁵ Three sit in Broward along Sheridan Street: at North Federal Highway (US-1), at State Road 7 (US-441), and at North Park Road. The other three are in Miami-Dade: Bird Road at both SW 87th Avenue and SW 97th Avenue, and North Kendall Drive at SW 147th Avenue.⁵ Sheridan Street showing up three times points to a corridor problem, not bad luck at one light.

Beyond single intersections, the corridors themselves matter. State Road 7 and Federal Highway run for miles through dense, walkable neighborhoods full of driveways and bus stops, and Broward's transportation planners have targeted both for safety work, along with Broward Boulevard and Sunrise Boulevard.⁶ I-95, the metro's main north-south interstate, ties the two counties together and carries constant freight from Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport through congested merges.

What the counties are doing about it

Miami-Dade adopted a Vision Zero goal of ending all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2040, and its Department of Transportation and Public Works has identified 24 critical locations on a high-injury network for priority fixes.² Broward is moving too. The Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization and Broward County won a $5 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to build the Broward Regional Safety Action Plan, which focuses on lane-departure, pedestrian and bicycle, and intersection crashes.⁶ At the state level, FDOT runs its own safety effort under the banner Target Zero.⁷

Right after a crash in Miami-Dade or Broward

Report it. Under Florida law, any crash involving injury, death, or a vehicle that has to be towed gets a long-form crash report, and the investigating officer files it with the state within 10 days.⁸ If police do not come out, you have 10 days to file your own written report with the state.⁸ Get that documentation, because it anchors everything that follows.

Then see a doctor quickly, even if you feel fine. Florida is a no-fault state, so your own Personal Injury Protection coverage pays first, up to $10,000 in medical and disability benefits.⁹ PIP covers 80 percent of reasonable medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages.⁹ There is a catch that trips up a lot of people: you have to get initial medical care within 14 days of the crash, or PIP will not pay for it at all.⁹ Soft-tissue injuries that surface a week later are exactly the ones this rule tends to bite.

Deadlines and fault rules that changed in 2023

Two big rules shifted in 2023, and they still catch people off guard. Florida's tort-reform law, HB 837 (Chapter 2023-15), cut the deadline to file most injury lawsuits from four years to two years for any crash on or after March 24, 2023.¹⁰ Miss that window and your claim is almost always gone. The two-year limit now lives in Florida Statutes section 95.11.¹¹

That law also changed how fault gets shared. Under Florida's modified comparative negligence rule, if you are found more than 50 percent responsible for your own injuries, you recover nothing.¹⁰ At 50 percent or less, your recovery is reduced by your share of the blame. That makes the police report and the early evidence more valuable than they used to be.

Getting help

Most fender-benders do not need a lawyer. Serious injuries, disputed fault, commercial trucks, and hit-and-run cases usually do. If you are weighing that, you can compare local options through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory and talk to someone who handles Miami-Dade and Broward crashes.

Keep your own file from day one: the crash report number, photos, the other driver's insurance details, your medical visits, and a running note of missed work. In a two-year world, that early record is what protects you.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Florida Traffic Crash Facts Annual Report 2024. https://www.flhsmv.gov/pdf/crashreports/2024-Crash-Report.pdf

2. Miami-Dade County, Vision Zero. https://www.miamidade.gov/global/initiatives/visionzero/home.page

3. Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, Dangerous by Design (2026 rankings). https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/rankings/

4. Florida Department of Transportation, What is Florida's Signal Four Analytics? (Safety Engineering FAQ). https://www.fdot.gov/safety/safetyengineering/safetyfaq.shtm

5. NBC6 South Florida, These are the most dangerous intersections in South Florida, according to experts (INRIX analysis, 2017-2021). https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/these-are-most-dangerous-intersections-in-south-florida-according-to-experts/3268707/

6. Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A). https://www.browardmpo.org/major-initiatives/ss4a

7. WLRN, Report: South Florida metro areas are among the most dangerous for pedestrians in the U.S. (FDOT Target Zero). https://www.wlrn.org/development/2026-06-11/report-nine-of-the-27-most-dangerous-metro-areas-for-pedestrians-in-the-u-s-are-in-florida

8. Fla. Stat. section 316.066 (2024), Written reports of crashes. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/316.066

9. Fla. Stat. section 627.736 (2024), Required personal injury protection benefits. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/627.736

10. The Florida Senate, CS/CS/HB 837 (2023), Civil Remedies (Chapter 2023-15). https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/837

11. Fla. Stat. section 95.11 (2024), Limitations other than for the recovery of real property. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/95.11