West Palm Beach and Treasure Coast car accident guide and data hub

If you were just in a crash somewhere between Boca Raton and Vero Beach, you are far from alone. Across the five counties that make up the West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce media market, police logged 38,016 crashes in 2024. Those wrecks injured more than 23,000 people and killed 307.¹ That is more than 100 reported crashes every day, and it works out to about one in every ten traffic deaths in the entire state of Florida.¹

This page pulls together what the numbers, the roads, and the law actually look like where you live, so you know what you are dealing with after a crash.

The 2024 crash count, county by county

Every year the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles publishes a crash total for each of the state's 67 counties.¹ Here is 2024 for this region:

• Palm Beach County: 26,550 crashes, 16,564 injuries, and 207 deaths. Fatalities rose from 194 the year before.¹
• St. Lucie County: 5,666 crashes and 49 deaths.¹
• Martin County: 2,945 crashes and 17 deaths.¹
• Indian River County: 2,165 crashes and 23 deaths, up from 18 in 2023.¹
• Okeechobee County: 690 crashes and 11 deaths.¹

Palm Beach County by itself accounts for roughly 70 percent of the crashes in the area. For scale, Florida as a whole recorded 381,423 crashes and 3,098 deaths in 2024, so this stretch of coast carries close to a tenth of the state's fatal toll.¹

Where the crashes cluster

In Palm Beach County the damage concentrates at a short list of intersections. County traffic engineers counted 9,246 crashes at the 200 busiest intersections in 2024, and the worst ones repeat year after year.²

The most crash-prone spot was North Military Trail at Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach, with 119 crashes in 2024, up from 92 a year earlier.² South Military Trail at Forest Hill Boulevard was second with 101.² Military Trail shows up in six of the ten worst intersections, most of them between West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach.²

The problem is not confined to the county's center. In Jupiter, North Alternate A1A at East Indiantown Road logged 95 crashes, the highest in the north county, up from 78 the year before.² To the south, Atlantic Avenue at South Military Trail in Delray Beach climbed to 89 crashes from 55 in a single year.² If your wreck happened at one of these, you have a lot of company.

Who is getting hurt

A large share of the people dying on these roads were never behind a wheel. In Palm Beach County in 2024, 61 pedestrians, 6 bicyclists, and 32 motorcycle riders were killed.¹ Together that is nearly half of the county's 207 traffic deaths.¹

Pedestrian deaths keep climbing. Palm Beach County's went from 54 in 2023 to 61 in 2024.¹ In Indian River County the rise was steeper, from 4 pedestrian deaths to 11 in one year.¹ The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has ranked the county sixth among Florida's large counties for pedestrians and cyclists killed or seriously injured.³ Smart Growth America's 2026 Dangerous by Design report put the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metro 17th among the most dangerous large metro areas in the country for people on foot.⁴

The roads are about to change

If you use I-95, plan for years of construction. The Florida Department of Transportation is studying a plan to add a lane and turn the existing carpool lanes into tolled express lanes on I-95 from Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach south to Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach.⁵ The plan is still in its design and environmental study phase, and FDOT has said the full build-out could take a decade or more.⁵ Work zones shift lanes and block sight lines, so this corridor is worth extra caution for a long time.

What to do after a crash here

Call the police and make sure a report gets filed. If your crash involved injury, death, or damage that a wrecker had to tow, an officer will investigate and complete a Florida Traffic Crash Report. If no officer investigates and the property damage is $500 or more, the law makes you responsible for filing a written report within 10 days, under section 316.066 of the Florida Statutes.⁶

Once it exists, you can buy your crash report through the FLHSMV crash portal, usually available within 10 days of the wreck, for the $10 fee set by state law.⁷

Then see a doctor within 14 days. Florida is a no-fault state, so your own Personal Injury Protection coverage pays first, up to $10,000. That benefit only applies if you get medical care within 14 days of the crash, under section 627.736.⁸ Miss the window and you can lose it entirely.⁸

The legal clock and the rules that changed

Two Florida laws shifted in 2023 in ways that still catch people off guard.

The deadline to sue got shorter. For crashes on or after March 24, 2023, you generally have two years to file a personal injury lawsuit under section 95.11 of the Florida Statutes.⁹ The old window was four years. The clock starts on the date of the crash, not the day you realize how badly you were hurt.⁹

The fault rules also got stricter. House Bill 837, signed on March 24, 2023, moved Florida to a modified comparative negligence system.¹⁰ Under the revised section 768.81, a person found more than 50 percent at fault for their own injuries recovers nothing.¹¹ If your share of the blame is 50 percent or less, your damages are cut by your percentage of fault.¹¹

And to sue an at-fault driver for pain and suffering at all, your injury has to clear Florida's serious injury threshold: a permanent injury, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or the significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, under section 627.737.¹²

Handling all of this while you are still healing is a lot. If you want to talk with an attorney who takes crash cases in this area, you can start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

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. The Palm Beach Post, "Crashes surge at Palm Beach County's most dangerous intersections" (2026), citing Palm Beach County traffic engineering data. https://www.aol.com/news/crashes-surge-palm-beach-countys-162704537.html

3. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office pedestrian and bicyclist safety data, reported by CW34. https://cw34.com/news/local/palm-beach-county-ranks-6th-in-state-for-serious-traffic-injuries-to-walkers-bikers-florida-july-23-2024

4. Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, Dangerous by Design 2026, as reported by WLRN. 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

5. WFLX, "Expand or leave it alone? FDOT proposes I-95 expansion in Palm Beach County" (Jan. 25, 2025). https://www.wflx.com/2025/01/25/expand-or-leave-it-alone-fdot-proposes-i-95-expansion-palm-beach-county/

6. Florida Statutes section 316.066, Written reports of crashes. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/316.066

7. Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Traffic Crash Reports. https://www.flhsmv.gov/traffic-crash-reports/

8. Florida Statutes section 627.736, Required personal injury protection benefits. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/627.736

9. Florida Statutes section 95.11, Limitations other than for the recovery of real property. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/95.11

10. Florida House Bill 837 (2023), Civil Remedies. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/837

11. Florida Statutes section 768.81, Comparative fault. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/768.81

12. Florida Statutes section 627.737, Tort exemption; limitation on right to damages. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/627.737