Albuquerque-Santa Fe Crash Statistics and Trends

Albuquerque and Santa Fe anchor the same television market, but they show up in New Mexico's crash data for different reasons. Albuquerque carries the weight of the state's worst pedestrian toll and its busiest interstate interchange. Santa Fe's problem is concentrated on two arterial roads that funnel most of the city's through-traffic. Both sit inside a state that just posted its third-highest crash-fatality count in a decade.¹

New Mexico's crash numbers are climbing back up

New Mexico logged 45,042 traffic crashes in 2024, up from 42,836 in 2023 and 40,884 in 2022, according to the New Mexico Department of Transportation's Traffic Crash Annual Report, compiled by the University of New Mexico's Geospatial and Population Studies unit and published in February 2026.¹ Those crashes killed 444 people and injured 19,244, out of nearly 110,000 people involved statewide. Fatalities haven't returned to the 483 deaths recorded in 2021, but 444 still ranks as the third-highest total in the last decade.¹

Some of the report's daily-toll figures are worth sitting with if you live in this corridor. NMDOT recorded a crash in Bernalillo County roughly every 30 minutes of 2024, and statewide, a pedestrian was struck every 12 hours, a bicyclist every 24 hours, and someone died in a crash every 20 hours.¹ Alcohol was a factor in 40 percent of all crash fatalities and 45 percent of pedestrian deaths.¹ Rural roads carried only 18.5 percent of the state's crashes but accounted for just over half of its fatalities, a split worth knowing if you regularly drive I-25 or I-40 between the two cities.¹

Bernalillo County carries the heaviest load

Bernalillo County, home to Albuquerque, recorded 17,733 crashes in 2024, nearly 40 percent of every crash in New Mexico. It also led the state in fatalities (122, or 27.5 percent of the statewide total), alcohol-involved crashes (618), and pedestrian deaths (48, a striking 47 percent of all pedestrian fatalities statewide).¹ Inside city limits, Albuquerque logged 15,529 crashes, 99 of them fatal, a rate of 27.7 crashes per 1,000 residents.¹

That pedestrian burden isn't new or improving much. Smart Growth America's 2026 Dangerous by Design report ranks New Mexico as the most dangerous state in the country for people on foot, with an average pedestrian fatality rate of 4.42 per 100,000 residents from 2020 through 2024, worse than the already-grim 2015-2019 period.² The Albuquerque metro area ranks second among the 101 largest U.S. metro areas, with 245 pedestrian deaths over that same five-year span, up from 176 in the prior five years.²

Central Avenue is ground zero

The corridor drawing the most attention from city hall is Central Avenue, old Route 66, particularly the stretch between Louisiana Boulevard and Eubank/Juan Tabo Boulevard. At a February 2024 briefing, Albuquerque officials said the city had logged 57 pedestrian crashes resulting in a fatality or great bodily harm over the prior year, with six of the fatal pedestrian crashes concentrated on Central between Louisiana and Eubank.³

The city's response has been concrete rather than symbolic. Under Vision Zero, adopted in 2019 alongside a Complete Streets ordinance, Albuquerque restriped the East Central corridor from six lanes to four, added Business Access and Transit lanes, cut the speed limit from 45 to 35 mph, and installed nearly 200 solar lights plus two HAWK pedestrian signals.⁴ By September 2025, the city reported the corridor had seen a 47 percent drop in fatal and serious-injury crashes, a 55 percent drop in traffic deaths, and a 34 percent drop in pedestrian and bicyclist deaths since the work began.⁴ Albuquerque also runs automated speed enforcement, in place since May 2022, on other high-crash corridors.⁵

Albuquerque's other perennial chokepoint is the Big I, where I-25 and I-40 cross northeast of downtown. NMDOT opened a formal operations and safety study of the interchange in September 2025, focused on the I-40 approach ramps and the I-25 northbound mainline between the interchange and the Comanche Road off-ramp.⁶ That follows an earlier rebuild of the nearby Paseo del Norte/I-25 interchange, a $93 million project finished in December 2014 that added a flyover ramp from northbound I-25 to westbound Paseo del Norte; the city says the rebuilt interchange now carries about 154,000 vehicles a day.⁷

Santa Fe's crashes cluster on two roads

Santa Fe County saw 3,314 crashes in 2024, the third-highest county total in the state, with 18 deaths and 181 alcohol-involved crashes, and its seven pedestrian deaths were the second-most of any New Mexico county, behind only Bernalillo.¹ Inside city limits, Santa Fe logged 2,411 crashes at a rate of 26.6 per 1,000 residents, with four fatalities.¹

An analysis of state crash data by the Santa Fe New Mexican found that between 2019 and 2021, the city logged 5,532 crashes at or within 150 feet of an intersection, involving 14,472 people and killing 25.⁸ Six of the ten worst intersections sat along Cerrillos Road, and three more along St. Francis Drive. The single worst was Cerrillos Road at Airport Road and Rodeo Road, with 110 crashes over those three years, followed by St. Francis Drive at Cerrillos Road with 93.⁸ Santa Fe Police Capt. Anthony Tapia told the paper the pattern tracks where the city's traffic funnels: the majority of traffic that travels in or through Santa Fe uses Cerrillos and St. Francis, the city's main arteries.⁸

The road connecting them has its own history

Between the two cities, I-25 climbs La Bajada Hill, a stretch NMDOT spent two years and $40 million reinforcing after a water table beneath the roadbed destabilized it. The agency finished the job in July 2024, six months ahead of schedule, burying roughly 1,000 concrete soil-mixed shafts under a mile and a half of interstate that carries about 35,000 vehicles a day.⁹

If you're hurt in a crash

None of these numbers change what to do after a crash. Get medical care, document the scene if you can, and get a copy of the police report from whichever agency responded, APD, Santa Fe Police, New Mexico State Police, or a county sheriff's office. If you need help sorting out fault or dealing with an insurer afterward, the legal directory lists attorneys who handle car accident cases in New Mexico.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. University of New Mexico, Geospatial and Population Studies, New Mexico Traffic Crash Annual Report, 2024 (published February 5, 2026), produced for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. https://gps.unm.edu/tru/reports/annual-crash-reports/annual-report-2024.pdf

2. Smart Growth America, Dangerous by Design 2026, State and Metro Rankings. https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/2026-dbd-rankings/

3. City of Albuquerque Police Department, "City Taking Proactive Measures to Curb Pedestrian Fatal Crashes," February 22, 2024. https://www.cabq.gov/police/news/city-taking-proactive-measures-to-curb-pedestrian-fatal-crashes

4. City of Albuquerque Municipal Development Department, "Roadway Safety Changes Take Shape Along Central," September 4, 2025. https://www.cabq.gov/municipaldevelopment/news/roadway-safety-changes-take-shape-along-central

5. City of Albuquerque, Vision Zero, "What Are We Doing?" https://www.cabq.gov/vision-zero/what-are-we-doing

6. New Mexico Department of Transportation, "NMDOT Launches Big I Study to Improve Safety and Traffic Flow," September 30, 2025. https://www.dot.nm.gov/blog/2025/09/30/nmdot-launches-big-i-study-to-improve-safety-and-traffic-flow/

7. City of Albuquerque, "Paseo del Norte & Interstate 25 Interchange Improvements," completed projects archive. https://www.cabq.gov/council/projects/completed-projects/2014/paseo-del-norte-i25-interchange-improvements

8. The Santa Fe New Mexican, "Treacherous crossings: Top 10 intersections for crashes in Santa Fe," citing New Mexico Department of Transportation crash data, 2019-2021. https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/treacherous-crossings-top-10-intersections-for-crashes-in-santa-fe/article_cbf19332-a1c3-11ed-af8b-3f8aca9f8866.html

9. New Mexico Department of Transportation, "NMDOT Celebrates Completion of First-of-Its-Kind Reinforcement Project on I-25/La Bajada Hill," July 23, 2024. https://www.dot.nm.gov/blog/2024/07/23/nmdot-celebrates-completion-of-first-of-its-kind-reinforcement-project-on-i-25-la-bajada-hill/