St. Louis car accident guide and crash data hub

A crash on Gravois Avenue or the inner belt of I-270 can upend your week in a few seconds. If you're reading this from a body-shop parking lot or a couch with an ice pack, this page is here to give you the local numbers and the Missouri rules that decide what happens next, with every figure tied to a source you can check. St. Louis is a two-state media market, but the core of it sits in Missouri, so the law below is Missouri law.

What the St. Louis crash data shows

The clearest picture of how people get hurt on local roads comes from Trailnet, the regional nonprofit that compiles police crash records for St. Louis City and St. Louis County into an annual report. Its 2024 report found the deadliest year on record for people on foot: 23 pedestrians killed in the city, up 187 percent from the year before, and 36 killed in St. Louis County, up 24 percent.¹² Total reported crashes actually fell about 9.5 percent from 2023 to 2024, so the roads got quieter while the outcomes for pedestrians got worse.¹ Over the past decade Trailnet's data shows people on foot making up a larger share of the region's road deaths, even as the raw number of crashes has come down.¹

Zoom out to the state and the trend is slowly bending down. Missouri recorded roughly 955 traffic deaths in 2024 and 909 in 2025, both preliminary counts from the Missouri Department of Transportation.³ MoDOT runs those records through the state crash database, and the same data feeds the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System kept by NHTSA.³⁴

The roads where crashes cluster

Local crashes aren't spread evenly, and Trailnet's reports keep flagging the same corridors year after year. In the city, Gravois Avenue has ranked as the deadliest street, with Grand Boulevard close behind; Kingshighway Boulevard and Broadway show up in the data again and again.²⁵ In St. Louis County, Lindbergh Boulevard tops the list, followed by Chambers Road, with Halls Ferry Road, Manchester Road, and Big Bend Boulevard also drawing heavy crash counts.²⁵

There's a pattern to these streets. They're wide arterials with high posted speeds, long gaps between safe crossings, and steady foot traffic in neighborhoods where many residents don't own a car. The interstates that ring the region carry their own risk: I-70, I-64, I-44, and I-55 through the core, plus I-270 and I-170 across the county. None of this is random; the same design choices that move a lot of cars quickly also make a single mistake more likely to be fatal. If your wreck happened on one of these, you're in the busiest and most common places for it.

What the city and state are doing

In 2024 the St. Louis Board of Aldermen adopted Resolution 200, committing the city to Vision Zero, the goal of ending traffic deaths and serious injuries by redesigning streets instead of treating crashes as bad luck. The resolution had its second reading on April 5, 2024.⁶ For drivers that means more reworked intersections and road diets on arterials like Gravois over the next several years.

At the state level, MoDOT runs its Show-Me Zero safety plan, which sets a target of cutting traffic deaths and serious injuries in half by 2045.⁷ The Missouri State Highway Patrol keeps the crash database that every one of these plans is measured against.⁸

Missouri rules that shape your claim

A handful of state laws do most of the work in deciding whether you recover anything after a crash.

You generally have five years from the crash date to file a personal injury lawsuit in Missouri, one of the longer windows in the country, set by Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.120(4).⁹ Five years feels like forever right after a wreck, but evidence fades fast, so treat the deadline as a ceiling, not a plan.

Missouri follows pure comparative fault. If the other driver's insurer argues you were partly to blame, your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, yet you can still recover something even if you were mostly at fault. The Missouri Supreme Court adopted that rule in Gustafson v. Benda in 1983, throwing out the older doctrine that barred any recovery for a partly at-fault driver.¹⁰

Every registered vehicle in Missouri has to carry liability coverage of at least 25/50/25: $25,000 for injury to one person, $50,000 per crash, and $25,000 in property damage, under Section 303.190.¹¹ Because those floors are low, state law also requires uninsured motorist bodily-injury coverage on every policy at limits of at least 25/50, so you have something to fall back on when the at-fault driver carries no insurance.¹² Underinsured motorist coverage is optional in Missouri, and it's worth pulling out your declarations page to see whether you bought it, because a $25,000 policy rarely covers a serious injury.

First steps after a St. Louis crash

Call 911 if anyone is hurt, and let officers write a report even for a fender bender. In the city that's the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department; in the county it's your municipal department or St. Louis County police; on the interstates it's often the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The official crash report becomes the backbone of any claim, and for Highway Patrol crashes you can pull a copy through the agency's online crash-report system.⁸

See a doctor the same day if anything feels wrong, because a gap in treatment is the first thing an adjuster uses to discount an injury. Photograph the vehicles, the intersection, and any skid marks before cars are moved. Tell your own insurer promptly, but know that you're not required to give a recorded statement to the other driver's company. If your injuries are more than minor or fault is disputed, that's the point to talk with a Missouri attorney; you can start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

Keep every bill, every mileage log to the doctor, and the repair estimate. Those records, together with the police report, are what turn a claim from your word against theirs into something an insurer has to take seriously.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Trailnet, 2024 St. Louis Regional Crash Report. https://trailnet.org/2025/05/01/trailnet-2024-crash-report-deadliest-year-on-record-for-st-louis-region/

2. St. Louis Public Radio, "Report shows St. Louis region sees its deadliest year for pedestrians" (May 1, 2025). https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2025-05-01/report-shows-st-louis-region-sees-its-deadliest-year-for-pedestrians

3. Missouri Department of Transportation, Number and Rate of Fatalities (statewide tracker). https://www.modot.org/number-and-rate-fatalities-1a

4. NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/

5. St. Louis Magazine, "Gravois is still deadly, but other St. Louis streets are getting calmer, Trailnet reports." https://www.stlmag.com/news/gravois-trailnet-crash-report-2025/

6. City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen, Resolution 200 (2023-2024 session), Vision Zero. https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/city-laws/resolutions/resolution.cfm?rsDetail=true&rsId=16313

7. Missouri Department of Transportation, About Highway Safety (Show-Me Zero). https://www.modot.org/about-highway-safety

8. Missouri State Highway Patrol, Traffic Crash Reports (Statistical Analysis Center). https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/stars_index.html

9. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 516.120. https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=516.120

10. Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11 (Mo. banc 1983). https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/1983/63857-0.html

11. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 303.190. https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=303.190

12. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 379.203. https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=379.203