San Diego set a goal in 2015 to eliminate all traffic deaths and severe injuries by 2025. That deadline has now passed, and the numbers moved the wrong way: traffic deaths in the city climbed from 78 in 2014 to a peak of 124 in 2022, before settling at 115 in 2024, a 47.4% increase over the decade.1 That happened even as San Diego Police Department traffic stops fell 56.9% over the same span, from 144,165 stops in 2014 to 62,071 in 2024.1 "We are not intending for traffic collisions to go up or traffic deaths to go up, obviously," SDPD Lt. Cesar Jimenez told KPBS in February 2026.1 That increase didn't happen evenly across the city. It concentrated on specific intersections and freeway corridors, the same ones a San Diego driver is statistically most likely to encounter.
Where crashes cluster in the city
Every year, the city's Transportation Department runs a High Crash Location analysis using only injury and fatal crashes, leaving out property-damage-only collisions so staff can focus limited funding where the harm is worst. The department's March 2026 memo, covering calendar year 2025, found five intersections with crash rates at least one standard deviation above the citywide average of 0.43 crashes per million entering vehicles:2
- Judicial Drive at Nobel Drive (signalized), a rate of 0.82, with 5 crashes against 16,689 daily entering vehicles
- 26th Street at Florida Drive (signalized), a rate of 0.76, with 9 crashes
- Imperial Avenue at 53rd Street (two-way stop), a rate of 0.71, with 5 crashes
- Imperial Avenue at San Jacinto Drive (signalized), a rate of 0.67, with 5 crashes
- 54th Street at University Avenue (signalized), a rate of 0.65, with 9 crashes
The Judicial Drive/Nobel Drive intersection, near University City, topped the list even though its traffic volume is modest by San Diego standards, which is exactly why the city measures crashes as a rate rather than a raw count. The department also scores each site's "access to opportunity," a planning metric tied to its climate equity work; that intersection rated "Very High," while the Imperial Avenue locations sit in neighborhoods rated only "Moderate."2
Pedestrians took the worst of it at a different intersection entirely. 5th Avenue at Broadway downtown recorded four pedestrian crashes in 2025, the most of any signal in the city.2 Two more locations, 47th Street at Imperial Avenue and Palm Avenue at Saturn Boulevard, each logged nine injury crashes, tying for the highest injury count citywide, and the stretch of University Avenue between Chollas Parkway and 54th Street had more injury crashes than any other single segment in San Diego.2
Pedestrian and cyclist deaths keep climbing
The people most exposed on San Diego's streets are on foot or on a bike. A November 2024 report from Circulate San Diego, "Vision Zero at Ten Years," found that 37 pedestrians and cyclists were killed on city streets in 2023, up from 25 in 2014, with the annual toll hovering around 35 since 2021, or roughly one non-motorist death every ten days somewhere in the city.3 The report tied the increase to larger vehicles, higher operating speeds, and street redesigns that move too slowly through the approval process. It described San Diego's trend as part of a national pattern, not a uniquely local failure.3 It singled out corridors including El Cajon Boulevard, where commercial driveways and bus stops interrupt bike lanes through North Park and City Heights, and Palm Avenue in the Otay Mesa-Nestor community, a six-lane roadway the report described as needing dedicated bike infrastructure.3 Circulate San Diego's Aria Grossman told KPBS that safer speeds and consistent enforcement are both necessary to reverse the trend, since traffic calming alone hasn't been enough.1
How San Diego County ranks against the rest of the state
The California Office of Traffic Safety ranks all 58 counties each year using an Empirical Bayesian method that weighs crash counts against population and vehicle miles traveled. For 2023, San Diego County, population 3,315,362 with 74,421,610 daily vehicle miles traveled, ranked 1st out of 58 counties, the worst rate statewide, for motorcycle-involved crash victims, with 1,693 killed or injured.4 The county ranked 9th for bicyclists under 15 and 11th for bicyclists overall, both near the high-risk end of the scale. Alcohol was a factor in 2,827 of the county's fatal and injury crashes that year, and the county logged 1,629 hit-and-run crashes, ranked 18th-worst, plus 8,149 DUI arrests.4 Its overall fatal-and-injury ranking of 42nd out of 58 was comparatively better than its motorcycle and bicycle numbers.4
Wrong-way crashes and freeway risk
Caltrans District 11 has spent close to $9 million installing reverse red pavement reflectors and flashing DO NOT ENTER and WRONG WAY signs, visible only to a driver heading the wrong direction, at 74 ramps across 13 routes that have seen wrong-way collisions: I-5, I-8, I-15/SR-15, SR-52, SR-54, SR-56, SR-67, SR-78, SR-94, SR-125, SR-163, SR-805, and SR-905.5 A state environmental filing from June 2025 shows the program still expanding, adding LED sign systems and pavement markings on ramps in San Diego and Imperial counties.6 The risk behind the spending showed up on I-8 near San Diego State University just before 3 a.m. on April 17, 2025, when a driver headed westbound in the eastbound lanes struck a Mini Cooper carrying 66-year-old Greysi Rivas of El Cajon head-on. Rivas died at the scene. The other driver, arrested on suspicion of DUI, needed heavy saws and prying equipment to be freed from the wreckage.7
The region's Safety Focus Network
Zooming out from any single road, SANDAG's regional count is stark: 4,433 people were killed or permanently injured in crashes on San Diego County roads between 2018 and 2022, or nearly three people every day.8 SANDAG's response, the Safety Focus Network, uses crash data to flag the roughly 6% of the region's roads that account for 54% of all fatal and serious-injury crashes. The agency directs engineering and enforcement funding at that slice of pavement instead of spreading it evenly across the county, and it publishes the underlying data on its Traffic Safety Dashboard through the SANDAG Open Data Portal.8
If you're in a crash
Crash reports and intersection-level data like the city's High Crash Location memo can matter later if fault gets disputed, so it's worth requesting the official report and photographing the scene before anything changes. If you need help sorting out fault or dealing with an insurer after a serious crash, the legal directory lists attorneys who handle San Diego crash cases.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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KPBS, "Data show San Diego police stop fewer drivers while more people die in traffic" (Feb. 23, 2026): https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2026/02/23/data-show-san-diego-police-stop-fewer-drivers-while-more-people-die-in-traffic
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City of San Diego Transportation Department, "High Crash Locations for Calendar Year 2025" memorandum (March 24, 2026): https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2026-04/2025-high-crash-locations.pdf
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KPBS, "Report suggests bigger vehicles, slow construction timelines led to San Diego's 'Vision Zero' failure" (Nov. 13, 2024), reporting on Circulate San Diego's "Vision Zero at Ten Years": https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2024/11/13/report-suggests-bigger-vehicles-slow-construction-timelines-led-to-san-diegos-vision-zero-failure
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California Office of Traffic Safety, Crash Rankings Results, San Diego County (2023 data): https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings-results/
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Caltrans District 11, Wrong-Way Driver Education and Prevention: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-11/popular-links/d11wwd
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California Department of Transportation District 11, CEQA filing, "Installation of Wrong Way Enhanced Deterrent Measures in San Diego County" (filed June 25, 2025): https://ceqanet.lci.ca.gov/2025061202
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Times of San Diego, "Victim, 66, of fatal wrong-way freeway crash near SDSU ID'd as Greysi Rivas of El Cajon" (April 18, 2025): https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2025/04/18/victim-66-of-fatal-wrong-way-freeway-crash-near-sdsu-idd-as-greysi-rivas-of-el-cajon/
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San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), Vision Zero regional initiative: https://www.sandag.org/projects-and-programs/regional-initiatives/vision-zero