Crash statistics and trends in the Richmond-Petersburg area

Richmond and Petersburg sit inside the same Virginia Department of Transportation crash-reporting district, and the numbers tell a clear story: a handful of named roads carry most of the region's traffic deaths and serious injuries. Between 2017 and 2025, that district recorded 1,399 fatal crashes, the second-highest total of Virginia's nine VDOT districts.¹ Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Petersburg each publish their own crash counts, and once you line them up against specific streets and intersections, the state-level averages stop mattering much.

Richmond's high injury network

Richmond adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan in 2021, after then-Mayor Levar Stoney pledged in October 2017 to eliminate traffic deaths on city streets by 2030.² The plan's baseline data showed the city averaging 13 deaths and 2,700 injuries a year, with 22 people killed in 2017 alone, a rate the city said was roughly four times Alexandria's and over three and a half times New York City's. VDOT crash data behind the plan found that just 7 percent of Richmond's road mileage, its "High Injury Network," carries 62 percent of all fatal and serious injury crashes, and 81 percent of those crashes happen at intersections rather than mid-block.² Pedestrians make up 28 percent of the people killed on Richmond streets, far more than their share of everyday road traffic.

The city made real progress for a while. Richmond Police credited a 32 percent drop in traffic deaths, from 25 in 2023 to 17 in 2024, to enforcement on the high injury network plus roughly 200 new speed tables and lower posted speeds (45 mph cut to 35 citywide, and 35 to 25 in the highest-risk areas).³ Broad Street and Belvidere Street was one of the intersections named as part of that network, alongside a new safety camera on Semmes Avenue.³ The progress didn't hold. Richmond's Vision Zero dashboard logged 22 traffic deaths in 2025, back near the 2017 baseline and short of the 2030 goal.⁴ Six pedestrians died within about three weeks spanning late December 2025 and early January 2026, including a person killed in a downtown crosswalk on December 27, a hit-and-run on Semmes Avenue on January 3, and a pedestrian struck near Carver Elementary School on January 6.⁴ That cluster pushed Mayor Danny Avula to announce a package of changes on January 8, 2026: ten new red-light camera intersections, left-turn hardening at more than 80 High Injury Network intersections, 14 new pedestrian hybrid beacons, 40 additional speed tables, a road safety assessment of East Broad Street, and a new city Department of Transportation under director Andrew Boenau.⁵

West Broad Street's crash-prone intersections in Henrico

Henrico County's 2025 crash report, built from Virginia DMV data, shows why West Broad Street draws so much attention from county police. Seven of the county's ten highest-crash locations for 2025 sit along that corridor:⁶

• W. Broad Street & John Rolfe Parkway, 35 crashes
• S. Laburnum Avenue & Gay Avenue, 23 crashes
• W. Broad Street & Tom Leonard Drive, 21 crashes
• W. Broad Street & Dominion Boulevard, 19 crashes
• W. Broad Street & Gaskins Road, 19 crashes
• W. Broad Street & Parham Road, 18 crashes
• W. Broad Street & Pouncey Tract Road/Pump Road, 18 crashes

Henrico's traffic deaths fell from 48 in 2024 to 33 in 2025, though the drop wasn't even across the county. Varina's magisterial district alone recorded 11 of the 33 deaths, more than Brookland, Three Chopt, and Fairfield combined.⁶ Pedestrian crashes kept climbing even as deaths eased, rising from 88 in 2024 to 94 in 2025, while crashes involving cyclists fell 43 percent over the same year.⁶ VDOT is now studying reconfigurations on two corridors that feed into West Broad Street: Nine Mile Road between East Gate Boulevard and Airport Drive, and Williamsburg Road between East Side Lane and Nine Mile Road, both aimed at adding bike lanes and closing sidewalk gaps within the existing curb lines.⁷

Chesterfield's Hull Street Road and Chippenham Parkway

Chesterfield County logged 6,191 crashes and 33 deaths in 2024, more total crashes than anywhere else in the region even though its death toll ran below Henrico's.⁸ Hull Street Road, VA 360, saw at least two fatal crashes in 2025: a hit-and-run that killed a pedestrian near Turner Road and Wayside Drive on August 10, and a fatal crash in the 10100 block on June 13.⁹ Separately, VDOT is studying safety fixes for Chippenham Parkway (Route 150) between Dalebrook Drive and I-95 after that stretch recorded three fatal and 34 severe-injury crashes between 2019 and 2024.¹⁰

Petersburg's Crater Road corridor

Petersburg is smaller than its Henrico and Chesterfield neighbors, with 930 crashes and 4 deaths recorded by the DMV in 2024, but its main commercial corridor, South Crater Road (US 301), has its own VDOT safety study.¹¹ Between Wagner Road and Rives Road, the corridor logged 384 crashes over the study period, 40 percent angle collisions and 29 percent rear-end.¹¹ Four intersections accounted for most of that total:

• S. Crater Road & Wagner Road, about 10 crashes a year, 42 percent angle collisions
• Wagner Road & Medical Park Boulevard, about 6 crashes a year, 57 percent rear-end
• Rives Road & the I-95 southbound ramp, about 5 crashes a year, 62 percent angle collisions, where VDOT flagged limited sight distance from the roadway grade and roadside foliage
• S. Crater Road & Crater Circle, about 4 crashes a year, 39 percent rear-end

Just south of that study area, the I-95/I-85 interchange is itself the subject of a $46 million SMART SCALE funding request, one of 14 Richmond-region projects state officials recommended for a combined $338.5 million in April 2025.¹² Neighboring Hopewell landed $42.7 million in that same round for sidewalks and bike lanes along Winston Churchill Drive between Terrace Avenue and High Street.¹² Dinwiddie County, which wraps around much of Petersburg, recorded 633 crashes and 11 deaths in 2024, and Prince George County recorded only 560 crashes but 12 deaths, the highest fatality-per-crash ratio of any locality in the region.⁸

Reading the numbers against the state

Virginia as a whole recorded 129,244 crashes in 2024, with 918 people killed and 64,086 injured, a 1.2 percent rise in deaths over 2023.⁸ Pedestrians accounted for 126 of those deaths statewide, and more than half of pedestrian fatalities happened in the dark on roads without lighting.⁸ Set against that baseline, the Richmond-Petersburg region's own numbers, concentrated on named stretches of West Broad Street, Hull Street Road, Chippenham Parkway, and Crater Road, explain why local agencies keep coming back to the same intersections instead of treating crashes as scattered bad luck.

After a crash

If you or someone you know was hurt in a crash on any of these roads, an attorney familiar with the local crash reports and VDOT studies can help sort out what happened and who's responsible. You can find one through the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. WRIC ABC 8News, "Deadly data: A look at Virginia's crashes in recent years," https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/virginia-rva-crash-2017-2025/amp/

2. City of Richmond, "Vision Zero Action Plan" (2021), https://www.rva.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/VisionZero-RichmondActionPlan.pdf

3. Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police & Foundation, "Agency Spotlight: Richmond Police Achieve 32% Reduction in Traffic-Related Fatalities in 2024," https://www.vachiefs.org/news/agency-spotlight-richmond-police-achieve-32-reduction-in-traffic-related-fatalities-in-2024

4. WTVR CBS 6, "Data shows Richmond not progressing on goal to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2030" (Jan. 7, 2026), https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/data-shows-richmond-falling-short-of-goal-to-eliminate-traffic-deaths-jan-7-2026

5. WTVR CBS 6, "'We will change the streets': Richmond mayor announces immediate actions to prevent traffic deaths" (Jan. 8, 2026), https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/richmond-mayor-traffic-changes-jan-8-2026

6. Henrico County Police Division, "2025 Henrico Police Crime Statistics: Traffic Crashes & Charges" (March 25, 2026), https://henrico.gov/assets/2025-HENRICO-POLICE-TRAFFIC-CRASHES.-CHARGES-DATA.pdf

7. Virginia Department of Transportation, "Williamsburg Road and Nine Mile Road roadway reconfiguration feasibility study in Henrico," https://vdot.virginia.gov/projects/richmond-district/henrico---williamsburg-road-and-nine-mile-road-roadway-reconfiguration-feasibility-study/

8. Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Virginia Highway Safety Office, "2024 Virginia Traffic Crash Facts," https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/documents/VA-traffic-crash-2024.pdf

9. Chesterfield County Police Department, "Police Investigate Fatal Hit and Run," https://www.chesterfield.gov/m/newsflash/home/detail/6346

10. Virginia Department of Transportation, Richmond District, "Provide input on Project Pipeline studies assessing potential safety improvements" (Chippenham Parkway), https://www.vdot.virginia.gov/news-events/news/richmond-district/provide-input-on-three-project-pipeline-studies-assessing-potential-safety-improvements.php

11. Virginia Project Pipeline / VDOT, "S Crater Road (VA 301) from Wagner Road to Rives Road, City of Petersburg, Final Report" (WSP, December 2024), https://vaprojectpipeline.virginia.gov/media/va-project-pipeline/documents/ri/RI-23-06-Final-Report_acc12262024_PM.pdf

12. Richmond BizSense, "$338M in Smart Scale funding recommended for 14 transportation projects in Richmond region" (April 21, 2025), https://richmondbizsense.com/2025/04/21/338m-in-smart-scale-funding-recommended-for-14-transportation-projects-in-richmond-region/