San Diego car accident guide and data hub

If you were just in a crash somewhere between the 5 and the 805, this page gathers the local numbers, the specific streets where crashes pile up, and the California deadlines you're now on the clock for. Everything here comes from the City of San Diego, SANDAG, the state, and the courts, and it's cited so you can check it yourself.

What the San Diego crash numbers show

The scale is easier to take in per day than per year. Across the San Diego region, nearly three people are killed or seriously injured on the roads every day.¹ Add those days up and the toll from 2018 through 2022 came to 4,433 people killed or permanently changed by a crash.¹ Most of that harm sits on a small slice of pavement. SANDAG's Vision Zero Action Plan found that 6% of the regional road network accounts for 54% of the fatal and serious-injury crashes.¹

Inside the city, the California Office of Traffic Safety counted 4,861 people killed or injured in traffic crashes in its most recent ranking year, 522 of them pedestrians.² OTS weighs each city's crashes against its population and how many miles people drive there, then ranks the 15 largest California cities from 1 (worst) to 15 (best). San Diego sits at 13th for total fatal and injury crashes, so per mile driven it comes out safer than most large California cities.² On that same 1-is-worst scale it lands nearer the bad end in two categories: bicycle crashes, 6th with 380 riders hurt or killed, and alcohol-involved crashes, 7th with 740 victims. The city also logged 533 hit-and-run crashes that injured or killed someone.²

Where crashes cluster

Every year the city's Transportation Department runs a citywide high-crash analysis, and the 2024 review is specific enough to name streets. Engineers started with the 38 intersections that had five or more injury or fatal crashes, then flagged the five with the highest crash rate once traffic volume was accounted for.³

Worst by that rate was 15th Street at F Street in East Village, followed by 8th Avenue at Broadway downtown, Bayard Street at Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach, and 8th Avenue at University Avenue.³ By raw count one signal stood apart: Kettner Boulevard at Sassafras Street, in Middletown just north of Little Italy, logged 10 injury crashes in a single year, most of them broadside hits between westbound and southbound cars.³ For people on foot, the report singled out Otay Center Drive at Siempre Viva Road in Otay Mesa; for left-turn crashes, Garnet Avenue at Mission Bay Drive in Pacific Beach.³ Genesee Avenue at the eastbound State Route 52 ramp, a Caltrans intersection that has been under construction for years, showed up on four separate problem lists.³

Whole stretches of road carry risk too. The 2024 memo named segments of Fairmount Avenue, Imperial Avenue between 53rd Street and Jacinto Drive, Midway Drive, and Mission Gorge Road among those with the most injury crashes.³

The prior year points at some of the same corridors. From its 2023 review the city prioritized seven spots for fixes, among them Art Street at El Cajon Boulevard, Kurtz Street at Rosecrans Street, Miramar Road at Nobel Drive, Pacific Highway at Taylor Street, and El Cajon Boulevard from 63rd Street to Choctaw Drive.⁴ El Cajon Boulevard keeps recurring, and if you drive it, that's worth filing away.

The fixes tend to be small and physical: flashing beacons, longer pedestrian countdowns, new crosswalks, and red curbs near corners to match California's daylighting law, which since 2025 bars parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk.⁴

The hours after a crash, and the deadlines that start now

California puts two separate clocks on you, and missing either one stacks a new problem on top of the crash.

If anyone was hurt or killed, state law requires a written report to the California Highway Patrol, or to the local police if the crash happened inside a city, within 24 hours.⁵ In San Diego that means the San Diego Police Department or CHP. Separately, you have to file form SR-1 with the DMV within 10 days if the crash caused any injury, any death, or more than $1,000 in property damage to one person.⁶ The SR-1 is required on top of the police report and anything you tell your insurer.⁶ Since $1,000 barely covers a bumper now, most crashes clear that line.

If it's safe, photograph everything before the cars move: the vehicles, the intersection, skid marks, the other plate. When a crash happens on one of the corridors above, the street's own layout is often part of what went wrong.

Who pays, and how fault gets split

California is a pure comparative negligence state, a rule the state Supreme Court set in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. in 1975.⁷ Your compensation drops by your share of the blame, but you can still recover even if most of the fault was yours. Found 30% responsible, you collect 70% of your damages.

The other driver's insurance is the usual first stop, and the floor for that coverage just rose. Under Senate Bill 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act, the minimum liability limits went up on January 1, 2025 to $30,000 for one person's injuries, $60,000 per crash, and $15,000 for property damage, roughly double the old minimums.⁸ Those are floors, and a serious injury blows past them fast, which is where your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage earns its keep.

One deadline sits above the rest. In California you generally have two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit.⁹ If the claim is against a public entity, say a dangerous-intersection claim against the city or Caltrans, a much shorter clock applies: you have to present that claim within six months.¹⁰ Given how many of the streets above are public roads, that short window is easy to trip over.

Getting help

You don't need a lawyer for every fender-bender. But if someone was seriously hurt, if fault is being fought over, or if an insurer is slow-walking you, talk to one well before the two-year window closes. You can start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), Vision Zero and Regional Vision Zero Action Plan (2024). https://www.sandag.org/projects-and-programs/regional-initiatives/vision-zero

2. California Office of Traffic Safety, OTS Crash Rankings, San Diego (2023 ranking year; Group A, cities over 250,000). https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/san-diego-2023/ ; ranking method at https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings/

3. City of San Diego Transportation Department, "High Crash Locations for Calendar Year 2024" (memorandum, March 24, 2025). https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2025-03/2024-high-crash-locations.pdf

4. City of San Diego, "City of San Diego Identifies Safety Improvements for High Crash Locations" (news release, Jan. 13, 2025). https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/2025-01-13-city-of-san-diego-identifies-safety-improvements-for-high-crash-locations.pdf

5. California Vehicle Code section 20008 (report of accident causing injury or death). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=20008.&lawCode=VEH

6. California DMV, Report of Traffic Accident Occurring in California (SR-1); California Vehicle Code section 16000. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-virtual-office/accident-reporting/

7. Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1139343/li-v-yellow-cab-co/

8. California Senate Bill 1107 (2022), Protect California Drivers Act, operative Jan. 1, 2025. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1107

9. California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 (two-year limit for injury or death). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=335.1.&lawCode=CCP

10. California Government Code section 911.2 (six-month deadline to present a claim against a public entity). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=911.2.&lawCode=GOV