Phoenix and Prescott Crash Statistics and Trends

If you've been in a wreck anywhere between downtown Phoenix and the Prescott area, you're part of a pattern that shows up clearly in state data. Arizona logged 121,107 traffic crashes in 2024, down 1.74% from 123,256 the year before, and 1,228 people died on the state's roads, a 6.12% drop from 2023's 1,308 fatalities.¹ That's still more than three deaths a day statewide. ADOT Director Jennifer Toth called the numbers "still too high and affecting too many people," pointing to speeding and impaired driving as the preventable causes behind most of them.²

Maricopa County, the core of this media market, drives most of that total. The county recorded 88,094 crashes in 2024, about 73% of every crash in Arizona, with 560 of them fatal and 594 deaths.¹ Yavapai County, home to Prescott and Prescott Valley, is far smaller by comparison: 3,836 crashes, 57 fatal, and 63 deaths for the year.¹ Together the two counties bookend this DMA, one urban and freeway-heavy, the other a mountain corridor where a single highway carries most of the risk.

The intersections planners already know are dangerous

The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), the regional planning agency for the Phoenix area, has ranked the Valley's 100 riskiest intersections every year since 2010, screening more than 22,000 intersections and scoring each on what MAG calls a Final Risk Score, a formula that blends crash frequency, injury severity, and the dollar cost of those crashes.³ The most recent five-year dataset, covering 2018 through 2022, puts these ten at the top:

67th Avenue and McDowell Road, Phoenix (ranked #1)
51st Avenue and Camelback Road, Glendale
19th Avenue and Peoria Avenue, Phoenix
67th Avenue and Thomas Road, Phoenix
67th Avenue and Indian School Road, Phoenix
83rd Avenue and Indian School Road, Phoenix
Cave Creek Road and Sweetwater Avenue, Phoenix
51st Avenue and Thomas Road, Phoenix
27th Avenue and Camelback Road, Phoenix
99th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road, Phoenix

Nine of the ten sit in west Phoenix or Glendale.⁴ MAG transportation engineer Mohammad Shaheed has described the ranking simply: those intersections have "quite a few severe crashes, including fatal crashes," compared with everywhere else in the region.⁴

Phoenix's pedestrian problem

The city of Phoenix adopted a Vision Zero policy in 2022 aimed at eliminating traffic deaths by 2050. Three years in, the results are mixed. Citywide traffic deaths fell to 278 in 2024 from 307 in 2023, but the city is still missing its own targets for reducing pedestrian fatalities and nighttime crashes.⁵ Traffic engineering supervisor Carl Langford says the infrastructure work does pay off over time, noting that a couple of years after a safety project wraps up at a location, "collision rates do come down."⁵ That work is competing with shrinking enforcement: Phoenix police's dedicated traffic unit has fallen from more than 150 officers to roughly 40 amid staffing shortages, part of why the city is installing 17 speed cameras, nine on high-crash road segments and eight in school zones.⁵

Arizona's numbers explain why pedestrian safety keeps coming up. A 2025 analysis by AAA Mountain West Group of five years of federal crash data found Arizona's male pedestrian death rate reached 6.0 per 100,000 people in 2022, nearly double the national rate of 3.2, while the state's female rate of 2.6 per 100,000 was also roughly double the national figure.⁶ Statewide, ADOT recorded 2,079 pedestrian crashes in 2024, a five-year high, with 263 deaths. Maricopa County alone accounted for 158 of those deaths and 1,425 pedestrian injuries.¹

The I-17 corridor between Phoenix and Prescott

Interstate 17 is the highway that physically ties this market together, and ADOT and the Department of Public Safety have designated the stretch between Black Canyon City and Camp Verde a "Safety Corridor," with extra patrols and electronic message signs reading things like "Stay Alert, Stay Alive" during holiday weekends.⁷ The label isn't just messaging. An ADOT analysis found that "speed too fast for conditions" was cited in more than 40% of crashes on that section of I-17, and then-ADOT Director John Halikowski said driver behavior, not the road itself, "remains the key" to bringing that down.⁸

ADOT has also spent heavily on the corridor's infrastructure. MAG committed $50 million toward improvements near Anthem starting in 2019, and ADOT layered on more than $100 million for flex-lane construction beginning in 2021.⁸ That grew into the $446 million I-17 Improvement Project, which widened 15 miles of highway between Anthem Way and Black Canyon City and built roughly eight miles of reversible flex lanes between Black Canyon City and Sunset Point, a corridor that carries close to a million vehicles a year.⁹ Those flex lanes are already earning their keep: in March 2026, a rollover crash near Bumble Bee Road, about seven miles north of Black Canyon City, ejected three people from the vehicle and shut down the northbound lanes for roughly two hours before ADOT opened the flex lanes as a southbound detour.¹⁰

Prescott Valley's fix for State Route 69

On the Prescott side, ADOT is rebuilding a 2.2-mile stretch of State Route 69 in Prescott Valley, between Navajo Drive and Enterprise Parkway, adding a raised median and laying groundwork for a future traffic signal at Mendecino Drive along with additional improvements near Truwood Drive.¹¹ The agency is leaning on Federal Highway Administration research showing raised medians can cut crashes by up to 40% on urban roads.¹¹ Yavapai County's own 2024 numbers show why: the county logged 42 pedestrian crashes with five deaths, and 213 alcohol-related crashes that killed 11 people.¹

What's actually driving the crashes

Across the whole market, the same factors keep showing up in the data. Speeding was tied to 417 deaths and more than 20,700 injuries statewide in 2024, close to 34% of all traffic fatalities.¹ Alcohol-related crashes made up only 4.56% of all Arizona crashes but 27.93% of fatal ones; Maricopa County alone recorded 180 of the state's 347 alcohol-related deaths, and Yavapai County another 11.¹ Distracted driving was a documented factor in 8,289 crashes, a number ADOT itself flags as likely undercounted since it depends on what an officer can determine at the scene.¹ Motorcyclist deaths dropped to 219 in 2024 from 262 the year before, a 16.4% decline, even as the state's registered motorcycle fleet held near 280,000.¹

If you're sorting through a crash on any of these roads right now, whether it's a west Phoenix intersection or a stretch of I-17 above Black Canyon City, the police report and the ADOT data behind it can matter for your claim. Arizona's legal directory lists attorneys who handle these cases across the Phoenix and Prescott area.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Arizona Department of Transportation, "2024 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts for the State of Arizona," https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2024-Crash-Facts.pdf
Arizona Department of Transportation, "Traffic fatalities in Arizona dip for second year in a row," https://azdot.gov/news/traffic-fatalities-arizona-dip-second-year-row
KJZZ, "Planners know Phoenix's most dangerous intersections. Here's how they're making them safer," https://www.kjzz.org/2024-01-11/content-1868021-planners-know-phoenixs-most-dangerous-intersections-heres-how-theyre-making-them
KJZZ, "These are the most dangerous intersections in metro Phoenix," https://kjzz.org/content/1864266/these-are-most-dangerous-intersections-metro-phoenix
KOLD News 13, "Phoenix adopts program to end traffic deaths; is it working?" https://www.kold.com/2026/01/30/phoenix-adopts-program-end-traffic-deaths-is-it-working/
AAA Mountain West Group, press release, November 12, 2025, https://mwg.aaa.com/news/press-release/nov-12-2025
Arizona Department of Transportation, "DPS, ADOT to focus on I-17 north of Phoenix as 'Safety Corridor' over Labor Day weekend," https://azdot.gov/news/dps-adot-focus-i-17-north-phoenix-safety-corridor-over-labor-day-weekend
Arizona Department of Transportation, "I-17 improvements north of Phoenix coming, but safety depends on driver behavior," https://azdot.gov/news/i-17-improvements-north-phoenix-coming-safety-depends-driver-behavior
Daily Independent (yourvalley.net), "ADOT starts 3-year I-17 project from Anthem Way to Sunset Point," https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/adot-starts-3-year-i-17-project-from-anthem-way-to-sunset-point,329996
AZFamily, "2 hospitalized after rollover crash on I-17 near Black Canyon City," https://www.azfamily.com/2026/03/13/2-hospitalized-after-rollover-crash-i-17-near-black-canyon-city/
Arizona Department of Transportation, "SR 69 improvements in Prescott Valley will boost safety, traffic flow," https://azdot.gov/news/sr-69-improvements-prescott-valley-will-boost-safety-traffic-flow

Crash statistics and trends in Phoenix and Prescott