If you were just in a wreck on the Northwest Expressway, or you've spent an afternoon stopped dead where I-35 meets I-240, the data backs up what it feels like to drive here. Oklahoma City's crash problem isn't evenly spread across the metro. It clusters on a short list of corridors and aging interchanges, and state and city records show it's been getting worse for several years running.
How many people are dying on Oklahoma City roads
Statewide, 3,462 people died in traffic crashes in Oklahoma from 2019 through 2023, an average of about 692 deaths a year1. The trend hasn't moved in the right direction: fatalities climbed from 640 in 2019 to a peak of 762 in 2021, before easing back to 697 in 20231. Oklahoma's 2023 fatality rate, 1.53 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, was the ninth highest in the country and well above the 1.26 national average1.
Oklahoma City's own numbers track the same pattern. The metro averaged 131 traffic deaths a year between 2018 and 2022, more than Tulsa's 102, and TRIP, a Washington-based transportation research nonprofit that analyzes state and federal crash data, puts the yearly cost of crashes, congestion, and rough pavement to the average Oklahoma City driver at $2,571, with $471 of that tied directly to crashes linked to roadway safety deficiencies1.
Pedestrians and cyclists absorb a disproportionate share of the damage. Statewide, 433 pedestrians and 68 bicyclists were killed between 2018 and 2022, about 15 percent of all traffic deaths1. In 2022 alone, Oklahoma recorded 96 pedestrian deaths and 15 pedalcyclist deaths2.
Where the crashes cluster
Oklahoma City Public Works has tracked crash concentrations along Northwest Expressway for years. In the most recent intersection-level count compiled by the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments, the region's federally designated transportation planning agency, covering January 2009 through mid-2012, seven of the ten highest-crash intersections in the city sat along Northwest Expressway, a road carrying 50,000 to 60,000 vehicles a day3. Northwest Expressway and Belle Isle topped the list with 237 crashes over that period, followed by Northwest Expressway and NW 63rd Street with 1833.
More current, corridor-level data comes from the city's Vision Zero Action Plan, adopted by the Oklahoma City Council on February 25, 20254. The plan identifies a High Injury Network of seven street segments, roughly 15 miles combined, where a disproportionate share of the city's severe and fatal crashes occur4:
- NE 23rd Street, from I-35 to N Bartell Road
- NW 23rd Street, from N Ann Arbor Avenue to N I-44
- Mustang Road, from Reno Avenue to SW 59th Street
- SW 44th Street, from I-44 to Johnston Drive
- S Pennsylvania Avenue, from SW Grand Boulevard to SW 59th Street
- NW 10th Street, from County Line Road to N Rockwell Avenue
- NW Expressway, from N Council Road to N Wilshire Boulevard
The city built the plan around a grim number: traffic deaths in Oklahoma City rose 34 percent over five years, reaching 99 in 20214. Oklahoma City developed the plan with $800,000 in federal grant funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation4.
The interchanges getting rebuilt
Some of the worst numbers come from where interstates meet. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation's own crash data for the I-35/I-240 interchange area, the aging cloverleaf on the south side of the city, logs 9,390 crashes between 2012 and 2021, an average of 939 a year, including 12 fatalities and 148 crashes with incapacitating injuries5. ODOT is rebuilding the interchange in phases, replacing the structurally deficient I-240 bridge over I-35 with a three-level, semi-directional design meant to add merging distance and remove the weaving sections the agency blames for many of the rear-end and sideswipe crashes there5. ODOT's own benefit-cost analysis for the project puts the price tag at roughly $153 million and projects a 2029 opening5.
This isn't the first time ODOT has torn out an interchange over safety concerns. The old I-40 Crosstown through downtown, a four-mile elevated span, was flagged for replacement after a crack turned up in a bridge pier beam in 1989. It had been built using a fracture-critical design that offered no redundancy if a single beam failed6. The state ultimately relocated I-40 five blocks south and converted the old alignment into the street-level Oklahoma City Boulevard, finishing the roughly $730 million project in August 20196.
Rough roads make crashes worse
Oklahoma City's pavement isn't helping. Thirty-two percent of the city's major roads are rated in poor condition and another 21 percent are mediocre, according to TRIP's analysis of Federal Highway Administration data, worse than the statewide poor-road share of 27 percent1. Five percent of the city's 2,025 bridges, 106 of them, are rated poor or structurally deficient1. Congestion adds to the toll: the average Oklahoma City driver loses 54 hours a year and $1,124 in wasted time and fuel sitting in traffic1.
All of Oklahoma's crash data, from the initial police report to the statewide fatality count, flows through one pipeline. Local law enforcement reports go to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, which forwards them to ODOT's Traffic Analytics branch, and from there into the SAFE-T crash reporting system maintained by the University of Oklahoma's Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory7. That's the same system behind the interchange-level numbers above.
What's actually causing the crashes
The Oklahoma Highway Safety Office's most recent annual report lays out where the state is still falling short. Speed was a factor in 159 of Oklahoma's 2022 traffic deaths, and drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher were involved in 186 more2. Motorcyclist deaths reached 93 in 2022, and 43 of those riders weren't wearing a helmet2. In FY2024, 56 Oklahoma law enforcement agencies used state safety grants to write 157,037 traffic citations and make 3,384 impaired-driving arrests2. On the encouraging side, the statewide seat belt use rate climbed to 86.4 percent in 2024, up from 81.2 percent the year before2.
Oklahoma City is trying a different approach
Rather than treating each corridor as its own problem, the Vision Zero Action Plan scores potential fixes against each other. Medians, median barriers, and pedestrian refuge islands rank highest, and the plan applies them across the High Injury Network first4. City planning, public works, and police staff started implementing it right after adoption, revising design standards and reviewing internal policy alongside the infrastructure changes4. Whether it moves the needle will show up in a few years of fatality counts on those seven corridors.
If you've been hurt in a crash on any of these roads, the police report, the crash data, and the road's known history can all matter to your case. An Oklahoma City attorney who knows the local corridors can help you sort out what happened and what it's worth.
This article provides general information about crash trends in Oklahoma City. It is not legal advice.
Sources
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TRIP, "Oklahoma Transportation By The Numbers," April 2025. https://tripnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/TRIP_Oklahoma_Transportation_By_The_Numbers_Report_April_2025.pdf
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Oklahoma Highway Safety Office, FFY2024 Annual Report. https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/highwaysafety/documents/the-work-we-do/reports-and-surveys/FFY2024-Oklahoma-Annual%20Report.pdf
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Association of Central Oklahoma Governments, "Highest Accident Intersections in Oklahoma City." https://www.acogok.org/highest-accident-intersections-okc/
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City of Oklahoma City, Vision Zero Action Plan. https://vision.okc.gov/vision-zero/vision-zero-action-plan
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Oklahoma Department of Transportation (prepared by Jacobs Engineering), "Crossroads of America: Replacing Bridges on I-35/I-240 in Oklahoma City," Benefit-Cost Analysis Technical Memorandum, May 6, 2024. https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/odot/progress-and-performance/federal-grants/mpdg/2025-2026/megainfra/crossroads-of-america--replacing-bridges-on-i-35-i-240-in-oklahoma-city/application-narrative/7.%20BCA%20Narrative.pdf
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Oklahoma Department of Transportation, "From I-40 Crosstown to Oklahoma City Boulevard: State hands key for new downtown gateway to Oklahoma." https://oklahoma.gov/odot/about-us/newsroom/2019/august/from-i-40-crosstown-to-oklahoma-city-boulevard--state-hands-key.html
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Oklahoma Department of Transportation, Traffic Analytics, Collision Analysis and Speed Studies. https://www.odot.org/traffic/collision_analysis/collision.htm