Crash statistics and trends in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville area

North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville media market sits on top of three of the state's busiest county road networks: Wake, Durham, and Cumberland. Statewide, drivers reported 284,546 crashes in 2024, and 1,622 of those crashes killed at least one person, for 1,732 deaths total, according to NCDOT's 2024 Statewide Crash Profile¹. Wake, Durham, and Cumberland counties alone accounted for more than 50,000 of those crashes²³⁴. Here's what the numbers, and the roads behind them, look like county by county.

Wake County and Raleigh

Wake County logged 33,284 reportable crashes in 2024, up from 32,874 the year before, with 12,144 injuries and 87 fatal crashes that killed 94 people². That's more total crashes than Durham and Cumberland counties combined, which tracks: Wake is North Carolina's most populous county, at just under 1.2 million residents². Pedestrians accounted for 21 of Wake's 94 traffic deaths in 2024, and motorcyclists for another 12².

Inside Raleigh, the crashes cluster hard around a small number of locations. City data shows intersections make up a small share of the road network but account for nearly half of all fatal and serious-injury crashes⁵⁶. Raleigh's transportation department has flagged roughly 200 high-risk intersections citywide and named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Rose Lane, Capital Boulevard at Huntleigh Drive, and U.S. 70 at Tryon Road as the three most dangerous for all travel modes combined. The MLK Boulevard site is now queued for a $1.26 million redesign⁶. Capital Boulevard at Calvary Drive ranks first in the entire state for pedestrian and cyclist crashes at an intersection⁵. Back in 2022, the city recorded 59 traffic deaths from 53 fatal crashes, and 51 of those deaths happened on NCDOT-maintained roads rather than city streets⁵.

Raleigh's Safe Streets for All action plan, released in April 2026, found nearly 1,100 crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists between 2019 and 2023, and those crashes are more than four times as likely to end in serious injury or death⁷. Meanwhile, the years-long widening of I-440 between Wade Avenue and U.S. 1 has coincided with more crashes, not fewer: 230 in 2020, climbing to 309 in 2023, a trend NCDOT engineers tie partly to distracted driving inside the work zone⁸.

Durham County

Durham County saw 10,004 reportable crashes in 2024 and 3,546 injuries, with 33 fatal crashes claiming 34 lives³. That's down from 41 fatal crashes in 2023³. The city's own Vision Zero office still counts an average of 23 traffic deaths a year in Durham⁹.

Durham's High Injury Network, built from crash data spanning 2016 through 2023, found that just 10% of city streets carry 74% of the fatal and serious-injury crashes, covering roughly 130 miles of roadway⁹. The city council approved a Vision Zero resolution in June 2024, and the resulting five-year action plan runs through 2029⁹.

The county's interstate interchanges show the same clustering. A WRAL Investigates review of NCDOT data from the first seven months of 2025 ranked Durham County's most crash-prone intersections¹⁰:

• I-40 at N.C. 55: 28 crashes, the most of any interchange in the county
• I-85 at Avondale Drive: 25 crashes
• I-85 at Roxboro Street: 23 crashes
• N.C. 54 at N.C. 55: 23 crashes
• I-85 at Guess Road: 21 crashes

WRAL's review also singled out I-85 at U.S. 15 Business/Roxboro Street as home to some of the county's most severe wrecks, even though it isn't the single highest-volume site¹⁰.

Cumberland County and Fayetteville

Cumberland County reported 7,439 crashes in 2024 with 3,205 injuries, and 57 fatal crashes that killed 58 people⁴. What stands out is who's dying. Twenty-one of those 58 deaths, more than a third, were pedestrians, a far higher share than in Wake or Durham that same year²³⁴. Fayetteville has spent years publicly confronting a reputation as one of the least walkable cities in the country, and NCDOT's Non-Motorist Crash Dashboard logged 80 pedestrian crashes in the city in 2023 alone¹¹.

The deadliest recent crash in Fayetteville happened on October 8, 2025, on Rosehill Road. A Honda traveling roughly 92 mph in a 45 mph zone left the road, hit a utility pole, and struck a tree, killing E.E. Smith High School students Nicholas Williams, Trevor Merritt, and Jai'hyon Elliott¹². Investigators later charged the 21-year-old driver with three counts of involuntary manslaughter and willful speed competition after determining she'd been racing another car¹³. The city's five-year review of that stretch of Rosehill Road turned up 168 crashes between July 2020 and July 2025¹².

Fayetteville's citywide numbers echo Durham's pattern at a smaller scale. From 2019 through 2023, the city logged 675 fatal and serious-injury crashes across all travel modes, and just 8% of road miles account for roughly 76% of them, with 2% of intersections responsible for about 42%¹⁴. The city's SS4A Comprehensive Safety Action Plan sets a goal of cutting fatal and serious-injury crashes 25% every five years¹⁴. NCDOT has already gone after one persistent trouble spot directly: a nearly two-mile stretch of Bragg Boulevard between Skibo Road and Stamper Road saw 500 crashes from 2012 to 2017, nearly 50 of them serious or semi-serious injury crashes, which led to a $6.6 million signal and crosswalk upgrade¹⁵. On the edge of town, the final segment of the $1 billion, 39-mile Fayetteville Outer Loop (I-295), running from U.S. 401 (Raeford Road) to Camden Road, opened to traffic in November 2025, six months ahead of schedule, completing a full bypass around the city¹⁶.

What's driving the numbers

Statewide, about 21% of fatal crashes and roughly 4% of all crashes in 2024 involved alcohol, and North Carolina logged 41 bicyclist deaths and 284 pedestrian deaths that year, both up from 2020¹. Locally, speed shows up more often than impairment. It's what made a Fayetteville street race fatal, what's climbing on the I-440 work zone, and what Raleigh keeps citing as it redesigns its worst intersections.

Getting help after a crash

If you were hurt in a crash on any of these roads, a Raleigh Beltline bottleneck, a Durham interstate interchange, or a Fayetteville corridor like Bragg Boulevard or Rosehill Road, an attorney can help you sort out who's responsible and what your claim is worth. You can find one through the legal directory.

This article is for general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. NCDOT, "2024 Statewide Crash Profile" - https://connect.ncdot.gov/resources/safety/Documents/Crash%20Data%20and%20Information/2024%20Statewide%20Crash%20Profile.pdf

2. NCDOT, "2024 Wake County Crash Profile" - https://connect.ncdot.gov/resources/safety/Documents/Crash%20Data%20and%20Information/2024%20Wake%20County%20Crash%20Profile.pdf

3. NCDOT, "2024 Durham County Crash Profile" - https://connect.ncdot.gov/resources/safety/Documents/Crash%20Data%20and%20Information/2024%20Durham%20County%20Crash%20Profile.pdf

4. NCDOT, "2024 Cumberland County Crash Profile" - https://connect.ncdot.gov/resources/safety/Documents/Crash%20Data%20and%20Information/2024%20Cumberland%20County%20Crash%20Profile.pdf

5. City of Raleigh, "Data to Support the Need for Vision Zero" - https://raleighnc.gov/fire/services/vision-zero/data-support-need-vision-zero

6. CBS17, "City of Raleigh aims to reduce deadly and serious crashes, address dangerous intersections" - https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/city-of-raleigh-aims-to-reduce-deadly-and-serious-crashes-address-dangerous-intersections/

7. ABC11, "Crash prevention NC: Ways to curb serious crashes, eliminate traffic deaths unveiled in Raleigh Safety Action Plan" - https://abc11.com/post/crash-prevention-nc-ways-curb-serious-crashes-eliminate-traffic-deaths-unveiled-raleigh-safety-action-plan/18980222/

8. WRAL, "Put down the phone: More crashes along I-440 widening project in Raleigh, data shows" - https://www.wral.com/story/put-down-the-phone-more-crashes-along-i-440-widening-project-in-raleigh-data-shows/21409345/

9. City of Durham, "Vision Zero" - https://www.durhamnc.gov/2995/Vision-Zero

10. WRAL Investigates, "Which intersections in Durham County have the most crashes?" - https://www.wral.com/news/investigates/durham-county-intersections-crashes-i40-nc55-january-july-2025/

11. CityView NC, "Fayetteville looks to shake its title as 'America's least walkable city'" - https://www.cityviewnc.com/stories/fayetteville-looks-to-shake-its-title-as-americas-least-walkable-city/

12. ABC11, "E.E. Smith students killed: Fayetteville begins study of Rosehill Road where 3 students died in crash: 'A dangerous curve'" - https://abc11.com/post/ee-smith-students-killed-fayetteville-begins-study-rosehill-road-where-3-died-crash-dangerous-curve/17999740/

13. CityView NC, "Police charge driver and her sister with racing in fatal E.E. Smith crash" - https://www.cityviewnc.com/stories/police-charge-driver-and-her-sister-with-racing-in-fatal-e-e-smith-crash/

14. City of Fayetteville, "SS4A Comprehensive Safety Action Plan (CSAP)" - https://www.fayettevillenc.gov/City-Departments/Public-Services/Traffic-Services/SS4A-Comprehensive-Safety-Action-Plan-CSAP

15. NCDOT, "Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville Will Be Improved for Safety" - https://www.ncdot.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/2023/2023-07-05-bragg-boulevard-improvements.aspx

16. NCDOT, "Fayetteville Outer Loop - Project Highlights" - https://www.ncdot.gov/projects/fayetteville-outer-loop/Pages/project-highlights.aspx