Columbus, Ohio Crash Statistics and Trends

Franklin County logged 25,049 crashes in 2025, and 67% of its fatal wrecks involved an impaired driver. Here's what the local crash data shows, from the county's busiest routes to the decade-plus rebuild of the I-70/71 split downtown.

ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial
Jul 16, 2026
5 min read

Franklin County logged 25,049 traffic crashes in 2025: 94 of them fatal, 517 with a serious injury, and the rest ranging from minor injuries down to fender-benders that only damaged property.1 That's close to the three-year average of 98 fatal crashes a year the county has posted since 2023, when a spike of 118 deaths pushed the number well above where it's settled since.2 Ninety-one of last year's 94 fatal wrecks happened inside the county's urban core rather than on a rural road, and 63 of them, roughly two-thirds, involved a driver who'd been drinking or using drugs.2 That OVI share has been climbing: it was 60% of fatal crashes in 2023 and 58% in 2024 before jumping to 67% in 2025.2

Where Franklin County's crashes cluster

Three routes account for a disproportionate share of the county's wrecks, and the ranking hasn't changed in three years. I-270, the outerbelt, led with 1,738 crashes in 2025, up from 1,509 in 2024 and 1,297 in 2023.1 Broad Street, which carries US-40, the old National Road, through the heart of downtown, was next at 986 crashes.13 I-70 followed close behind at 949, up sharply from 786 the year before.1

A downtown interchange three decades in the making

Where I-70 and I-71 split apart just east of downtown is the county's most complicated stretch of interstate, a stack of ramps built in the 1960s that ODOT has been rebuilding, piece by piece, since 2010. The agency now calls the effort the Downtown Ramp Up, part of a roughly $1.4 billion program that spokesperson Hannah Salem says will keep running into the 2030s because crews are "completely reconstructing and retooling significant portions of Columbus's highway infrastructure" while keeping both traffic and work crews moving through it.4 The phase rebuilding the downtown ramps, once penciled in for a 2027 finish, is now targeted for 2025-2026; a separate phase reconstructing I-70 eastbound that started in February 2024 is expected to run to around 2030.4 In late March 2026, ODOT scheduled a run of overnight closures on the SR-315 ramps and the Greenlawn Avenue ramp to I-71 north as part of that same rebuild.5

Farther west, a $54 million project narrowing I-70 between Hilliard-Rome Road and the Madison County line hasn't pushed crash counts up despite the tighter lanes: ODOT logged 15 work-zone crashes there in July and August 2025, the same as the same two months in 2024.6 ODOT District 6 spokesperson Matt McGuire said work zones don't necessarily see more crashes; the trouble is that "you don't have as much room to recover and react to anything" once one happens, and that following too closely caused most of the more than 4,000 work-zone crashes ODOT recorded statewide in 2024.6

What's driving the crashes

Failure to yield was a factor in 4,084 Franklin County crashes in 2025, speed in 2,340, and a driver running a red light or stop sign in 1,428.1 Two real examples from the Ohio State Highway Patrol's own quarterly bulletin show what that looks like on the ground. On January 13, 2026, a driver rear-ended another car on I-71 after admitting he'd been looking at his GPS, pushing it into a Highway Patrol cruiser ahead of it in traffic.1 Eighteen days later, a trooper tried to stop a car on Alum Creek Drive just before 4 a.m.; the driver ran a red light, hit roughly 90 mph, crashed through a fence near Frebis Avenue, struck two parked sheriff's vehicles, and blew a .156 on the breathalyzer.1

Fatalities are down from the peak, but not evenly

Inside Columbus city limits specifically, Vision Zero's own count shows fatal crashes falling from a 2021 peak of 73 to 48 in 2025, a decline of roughly a third since the city adopted its zero-fatality goal.7 Progress hasn't been even, though. The city's high-injury network, the small slice of streets that produce most of the serious crashes, has shrunk some: in 2020, 65% of fatal and serious-injury crashes happened on just 10% of city streets; by 2025 that had narrowed to 52% of crashes on 7% of streets.7 Pedestrians make up only 3.5% of road users in Columbus but 28% of the people killed in traffic, and the corridors that keep showing up on the high-injury list read like a tour of the city's widest arterials: Morse Road, High Street, Broad Street, Sullivan Avenue, Livingston Avenue.7 A year earlier, Columbus police put the city's 2024 fatal crash count at 28, with 16 involving impairment, 10 pedestrians killed (six found at fault in their own deaths), and four motorcyclists.8

East Broad Street shows what a road diet can do

In November 2024, the city used federal Safe Streets and Roads for All money to restripe two miles of East Broad Street, cutting it from six travel lanes down to two through lanes plus a protected bike lane in each direction.9 The results held up: crashes on that stretch fell from 28 in the first half of 2024 to 13 over the same months in 2025, drivers going 55 mph or faster in the 35 mph zone dropped 89%, and the corridor logged more than 12,000 bike and scooter trips with no bike or scooter crashes reported since.9 The city is now designing a permanent version of the same layout.9

Hit-and-runs, and the statewide picture

Columbus police's Accident Investigation Unit worked more than 16,000 crashes in 2025, and roughly 6,100 of them, about 40%, were hit-and-runs.10 Statewide, the trend is more encouraging: Ohio's traffic deaths have fallen for four straight years running, from a 2021 peak of 1,356 to 976 through mid-November 2025, versus 1,029 over the same stretch of 2024.11 Drugs were a factor in 43% of the state's 2024 fatal crashes, an unbelted occupant in 34%, alcohol in 32%, and excessive speed in 30%.11 Ohio logged 264,954 crashes statewide in 2025 overall.12

If you're hurt in a Columbus-area crash

A crash report from a Columbus police response runs through the department's online portal; a crash worked by the Ohio State Highway Patrol or a suburban department goes through that agency instead. Given how often OVI shows up in the county's fatal crashes, and how long the I-70/71 rebuild will keep shifting lane patterns downtown, it's worth having someone who knows the local roads look at fault before you settle anything with an insurer. You can find one through the legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

  1. Ohio Traffic Safety Office, "Fast Facts: 2025 Franklin County Traffic Crashes," https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Franklin.pdf

  2. Ohio State Highway Patrol, "Franklin County Fatal Traffic Crashes 2023 to 2025," https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/statepatrol.ohio.gov/statistics/statdocs/Fatals_25/Franklin_Fatals_25.pdf

  3. Franklin County Engineer's Office, "Ohio National Road," https://franklincountyengineer.org/ohio-national-road/

  4. AOL News, "I-70 and I-71 construction around Columbus to extend into the 2030s, according to ODOT," https://www.aol.com/70-71-construction-around-columbus-100827630.html

  5. Spectrum News 1, "ODOT warns of new I-70/71 impacts in Columbus" (March 24, 2026), https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2026/03/24/odot-i-70-71-impacts-in-columbus

  6. WOSU Public Media, "ODOT: Traffic delayed in I-70 construction zone when crashes occur, crashes not increasing" (Sept. 3, 2025), https://www.wosu.org/news/2025-09-03/odot-traffic-delayed-in-i-70-construction-zone-when-crashes-occur-crashes-not-increasing

  7. WOSU Public Media, "Is enough being done to prevent serious traffic crashes in central Ohio?" (May 28, 2026), https://www.wosu.org/show/all-sides/2026-05-28/is-enough-being-done-to-prevent-serious-traffic-crashes-in-central-ohio

  8. Local newsroom via Yahoo News, "Columbus Police Department records 27 fatal crashes in 2024," https://www.yahoo.com/news/columbus-police-department-records-27-234413659.html

  9. Columbus Underground, "Fewer Crashes, Lower Speeds on Broad After Bike Lanes Installed," https://columbusunderground.com/fewer-crashes-lower-speeds-on-broad-after-bike-lanes-installed-bw1/

  10. NBC4 WCMH-TV, "In Columbus, across US, hit-and-run crashes at an all-time high," https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/in-columbus-across-us-hit-and-run-crashes-at-an-all-time-high/

  11. Spectrum News 1, "Ohio officials push for fewer traffic deaths in 2025" (Nov. 13, 2025), https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2025/11/13/ohio-fewer-traffic-deaths-2025

  12. thatcarhitme.com, "Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report, 2025 Annual," https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/2025-annual-report

About This Guide

Written by: ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial

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