Albuquerque and Santa Fe's deadliest highways and corridors

New Mexico has led the nation in pedestrian deaths per capita every year since 2016, and 2024 was no exception.¹ The state recorded 445 traffic fatalities that year, 143 of them in Bernalillo County and 22 in Santa Fe County, the two counties that anchor this media market.² If you drive Central Avenue, I-25 through La Bajada, or Cerrillos Road on a regular basis, you're driving some of the specific stretches of pavement that produce those numbers.

This isn't a problem spread evenly across the state. It concentrates on a short list of named roads, and the data on where crashes cluster is public record.

Central Avenue carries the worst of it

Central Avenue, old Route 66, is the corridor state and city officials point to first. Central and Louisiana in the International District logged 25 pedestrian crashes in 2024 alone and is considered the single most dangerous intersection in New Mexico.¹ Zoom out and Central Avenue holds six of the state's top 10 most dangerous intersections; Albuquerque as a whole holds nine of the top 10.¹

The worst single segment is the roughly three-mile run of East Central between San Mateo and Eubank. At least 40 people have been killed there since 2018.³ City data covering 2014 through 2018 put injuries on the wider Central corridor, from Washington to Tramway, at 290, with 23 deaths in that window; the parallel stretch of Coors Boulevard between Tower and Montano saw 89 injuries and 23 deaths over the same years, and the intersection of San Mateo and Montgomery recorded 99 injuries and two deaths.⁴ The Governors Highway Safety Association's count for 2024 put Albuquerque's share of the state's pedestrian deaths at close to 53%.³

The city has been rebuilding East Central rather than just posting warning signs. Crews dropped the speed limit from 45 mph to 35, cut the road from six travel lanes to four, added bus and transit lanes, installed median fencing to funnel pedestrians toward marked crossings, and added two HAWK signals plus roughly 200 solar-powered lights between Louisiana and Eubank, at a cost of about $2 million paid largely out of speed-camera fine revenue.³ Through the first several months of 2025, the corridor had recorded five deaths, down from 11 over the same stretch of 2024.³

I-25 and La Bajada Hill

Between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the danger shifts from pedestrians to the interstate itself. NMDOT counted 462 crashes on I-25 between the two cities in 2017 and 379 in 2021, still more than one a day.⁵ A lot of that risk sits at La Bajada Hill, the steep grade southwest of Santa Fe where the highway drops off the mesa. The area logged nine crashes in 2022 and at least 10 more through mid-October 2023, including a fatal two-vehicle wreck that investigators attributed to alcohol, drugs, and excessive speed.⁵

NMDOT's response was a $40 million stabilization project: more than 1,000 soil-mixed shafts drilled 20 to 50 feet into the hillside to keep the shoulder from slipping, a new third southbound lane, and a concrete median wall, finished ahead of its original 2024 target.⁵ "The southbound shoulder was starting to slip off the edge of the road," NMDOT project manager Jared Rodriguez said of the damage that made the work necessary.⁵ The state also leaned on enforcement, and Public Safety Secretary Jason Bowie reported 534 citations issued on La Bajada in the span of a couple of weeks during one crackdown.⁵

Santa Fe's Cerrillos Road problem

Inside Santa Fe, the equivalent of Central Avenue is Cerrillos Road. State crash data for 2019 through 2021 shows 5,532 crashes at or near Santa Fe intersections, involving 14,472 people, with 2,740 suspected injuries and 25 deaths.⁶ Six of the city's 10 worst crash intersections sit on Cerrillos Road and three more on St. Francis Drive. The single worst point, Cerrillos at Airport and Rodeo roads, logged 110 crashes in three years; St. Francis and Cerrillos added 93 more.⁶

Local officials mostly point to behavior, not design. Santa Fe police captain Anthony Tapia has said it's rare to find a crash caused by road geometry or signal timing rather than driver error, and NMDOT spokesman Jim Murray has made the same point: there's usually nothing wrong with the actual intersection, people just aren't paying attention.⁶ Public Works Director Regina Wheeler put it more bluntly still: no amount of concrete and asphalt stops a crash caused by a driver who's speeding or not looking up.⁶

Alcohol, seat belts, and who's dying

Statewide, alcohol was a factor in 167 of New Mexico's 445 traffic deaths in 2024, and 160 people killed in vehicle crashes that year weren't wearing a seat belt.² Bernalillo County led the state in alcohol-related deaths, with 47.² TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, put New Mexico's 2024 fatality rate at 1.43 deaths per 100 million miles driven, the 10th highest in the country, and estimated the state's fatal and serious crashes cost $10.1 billion in economic and quality-of-life losses that year.⁷

Pedestrian deaths, at least, moved in the right direction: 94 statewide in 2024, down from 108 in 2023.² NMDOT credits its Target Zero program, part of a national Safe System push built around safer speeds, safer roads, safer vehicles, and safer people, with a stated goal of eliminating roadway deaths entirely by 2050.⁸ Albuquerque's parallel Vision Zero effort is aiming for zero by 2040 and has already added mid-block crossings, bikeways, and a 20 mph zone downtown.⁴

If you're hurt on one of these roads

None of this data changes what happens in the moment after a crash on Central, I-25, or Cerrillos Road. Get a police report, get medical care even if you feel fine, and hold onto anything documenting where and how it happened. If another driver caused the wreck, an attorney who knows these specific corridors can use NMDOT's crash history and prior safety complaints about a given stretch or intersection to support a claim. You can find one through the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Source New Mexico, "By the numbers: New Mexico targets its pedestrian death rate, the highest in the U.S." (Aug. 22, 2025): https://sourcenm.com/2025/08/22/by-the-s-new-mexico-targets-its-pedestrian-death-rate-the-highest-in-the-u-s/

2. New Mexico Traffic Crash Annual Report 2024, University of New Mexico Traffic Research Unit / NMDOT: https://gps.unm.edu/tru/reports/annual-crash-reports/annual-report-2024.pdf

3. KRQE, "Albuquerque's deadliest corridor gets a slew of safety upgrades for pedestrians": https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/albuquerques-deadliest-corridor-gets-slew-030300071.html

4. KOB, "Map shows Albuquerque's most dangerous streets, intersections for crashes": https://www.kob.com/archive/map-shows-albuquerques-most-dangerous-streets-intersections-for-crashes/

5. Santa Fe New Mexican, "Construction, crashes on I-25 worry commuters": https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/construction-crashes-on-i-25-worry-commuters/article_dac2a3ca-563a-11ee-b785-37df5de9d87b.html

6. Santa Fe New Mexican, "Treacherous crossings: Top 10 intersections for crashes in Santa Fe": https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/treacherous-crossings-top-10-intersections-for-crashes-in-santa-fe/article_cbf19332-a1c3-11ed-af8b-3f8aca9f8866.html

7. TRIP, "Addressing America's Traffic Safety Crisis: New Mexico" (news release, July 23, 2025): https://tripnet.org/reports/addressing-americas-traffic-safety-crisis-new-mexico-news-release-07-23-2025/

8. New Mexico Department of Transportation, "New Mexico sees decline in pedestrian fatalities in 2024" (July 21, 2025): https://www.dot.nm.gov/blog/2025/07/21/new-mexico-sees-decline-in-pedestrian-fatalities-in-2024/