The deadliest highways and corridors in metro Atlanta

In 2024, more people died in traffic crashes across metro Atlanta's five core counties, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett, than were killed in homicides: 425 traffic deaths against 410 homicides, according to an analysis from the nonprofit Propel ATL reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.¹ Statewide, Georgia recorded 1,615 traffic fatalities in 2023, a 10% drop from 1,796 the year before, though the state still ranks fourth in the nation for total traffic deaths (24th once you adjust for miles driven).² The danger isn't spread evenly. A short list of interstates, connectors, and surface streets accounts for a disproportionate share of it, and government crash data shows exactly which ones.

I-285, the interstate everyone calls the Circle of Death

I-285, the 64-mile beltway that rings the city, earned its nickname well before this year. A 2015 analysis of federal crash data found that in 2013, I-285 logged 26 fatal crashes and 29 deaths, a rate of 3.5 fatal accidents per 10 miles, the worst of any interstate in the country that year.³ That figure is now more than a decade old, but the Perimeter hasn't quieted down since. A driver died in a multi-car crash on I-285 northbound in DeKalb County in May 2025.⁴ A three-vehicle wreck on I-285 West near Old National Highway in Fulton County killed one person in January 2026.⁵ Two more people died in separate crashes that shut down the highway for hours in Clayton County and Sandy Springs in April 2026.⁶ Statewide, 12% of all fatal crashes involve a large truck, and I-285 carries some of the heaviest commercial truck volume of any road in the region, which helps explain why so many of its wrecks turn fatal rather than minor.²

The Downtown Connector's chronic crashes

Where I-75 and I-85 merge through Midtown and downtown, the Downtown Connector produces its own steady run of fatal incidents. A pedestrian who got onto the highway was struck and killed near Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard on the southbound Connector in December 2025.⁷ In January 2026, a driver whose Jeep broke down in the southbound lanes near University Avenue was struck and killed after getting out of her car, triggering a chain-reaction crash that involved six more vehicles and closed the highway for hours.⁸ GDOT's own statewide numbers explain the pattern: 45% of fatal crashes result from a vehicle drifting or crossing out of its lane, and a quarter happen at or near an intersection, exactly the weaving and merging the Connector forces on drivers every day.²

Atlanta's high-injury street network

Off the interstates, the city's own Vision Zero Action Plan has already mapped which surface streets carry the most risk. The High Injury Network, streets that account for 73% of fatal and severe-injury crashes despite making up less than 10% of the city's total street mileage, includes Juniper Street in Midtown, where 620 crashes were logged on a roughly one-mile stretch between 14th Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue from 2018 through 2022, and Lee Street on the southwest side.⁹ The plan followed a spike to 100 traffic deaths citywide in 2021, the highest total in a decade; the city counted 47 deaths on its surface streets in 2023 and has set a goal of zero traffic deaths by 2040.⁹

A five-year analysis of federal crash data from 2019 through 2023 found that 13 of Georgia's 20 deadliest road stretches sit inside Atlanta, spanning nearly 40 miles and accounting for 97 fatal crashes and 101 deaths over that period, among them sections of Moreland Avenue (State Route 42), Lee Street and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard (State Route 139), and the Langford Parkway freeway spur (State Route 166).¹⁰ The intersection of Moreland and McLendon avenues in Little Five Points, on that same Moreland corridor, got its own city fatal-crash review after 19-year-old Cooper Schoenke was killed there on April 14, 2025, when a driver fleeing a Georgia State Patrol chase ran a red light and hit his car.¹¹ At the fatal crash commission meeting that followed at Atlanta City Hall, GDOT proposed cutting the speed limit on Moreland to 30 mph and adding pedestrian barriers and raised pavement markers at the intersection.¹²

Buford Highway, built for cars in a place full of pedestrians

State Route 13, better known as Buford Highway, runs roughly 50 miles from Midtown Atlanta through Brookhaven, Chamblee, and Doraville into Gwinnett County, and it's been described as the region's most dangerous road for people on foot for decades, a wide, high-speed arterial that also carries some of metro Atlanta's densest immigrant and low-income residential corridors.¹³ In August 2025, Doraville, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Norcross, Gwinnett County, the Atlanta Regional Commission, and GDOT adopted a Safety Action Plan covering a 13-mile stretch of the highway from Brookhaven to Norcross, funded through the Federal Highway Administration's Safe Streets and Roads for All program specifically to address its pedestrian crash record.¹⁴ Metro Atlanta's own numbers back up the concern: DeKalb County, which Buford Highway cuts through, recorded 40 pedestrian and cyclist deaths in 2024, the highest count of any county in the five-county region Propel ATL tracked.¹

The county-by-county toll

GOHS county data sheets break out how unevenly crashes fall across metro Atlanta's core counties in 2024:¹⁵

• Fulton County: 51,572 crashes, 944 suspected serious injuries, 93 deaths
• DeKalb County: 35,860 crashes, 574 suspected serious injuries, 112 deaths
• Cobb County: 27,604 crashes, 449 suspected serious injuries, 57 deaths
• Clayton County: 12,823 crashes, 340 suspected serious injuries, 46 deaths

Those GOHS figures and Propel ATL's independent count don't line up exactly (Propel puts DeKalb's 2024 traffic death toll at 121), which is common when two organizations pull from different reporting windows, but both point to the same conclusion: DeKalb, home to both Buford Highway and a stretch of the Moreland corridor, absorbs an outsized share of the region's fatal crashes relative to its population.^{1 15}

If you're hurt on one of these roads

Corridor-level danger doesn't change how a claim gets built after a specific crash. The police report, the medical records, and who actually caused it still matter more than which mile marker the wreck happened at. If you're sorting through a claim after a wreck on I-285, the Connector, Moreland Avenue, or Buford Highway, an attorney from our legal directory can walk through what the report and the road's own crash history mean for your case.

This article provides general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Metro Atlanta traffic fatalities outpace homicides, report says" (Dec. 3, 2025). https://www.ajc.com/news/2025/12/report-traffic-fatalities-outpace-homicides-in-metro-atlanta/

2. Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety, "Georgia Traffic Safety Facts: 2023 Data, Overview of Motor Vehicle Crashes" (Oct. 2025). https://www.gahighwaysafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2023-Overview-of-Motor-Vehicle-Crashes.pdf

3. FOX 5 Atlanta, "Atlanta's I-285 Named Deadliest Interstate in America." https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/atlantas-i-285-named-deadliest-interstate-in-america

4. Atlanta News First, "Driver killed in overnight multi-car crash on I-285 in DeKalb County, police say" (May 11, 2025). https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/05/11/driver-killed-overnight-multi-car-crash-i-285-dekalb-county-police-say/

5. 11Alive, "Passenger dies after crash on I-285 West involving 3 vehicles in Fulton County, officials say." https://www.11alive.com/article/traffic/1-dead-after-crash-on-i-285-west-involving-3-vehicles-in-fulton-county-officials-say/85-9822ffe9-dba3-4c18-a3ba-e24f28c4c48d

6. WSB-TV, "2 dead in pair of crashes that shut down I-285 for hours." https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/i-285-crashes-lead-major-delays-sandy-springs-clayton-county/EHHBG455R5ERNF4E67PZHPTJHU/

7. Atlanta News First, "Pedestrian killed after being struck by car on Downtown Connector" (Dec. 27, 2025). https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/12/27/vehicle-accident-closes-southbound-lanes-downtown-connector/

8. WALB, "1 dead, multiple hurt in multi-car crash on I-75/85 connector in Downtown Atlanta" (Jan. 9, 2026). https://www.walb.com/2026/01/09/i-7585-connector-shut-down-downtown-atlanta-after-8-car-crash/

9. Rough Draft Atlanta, "Atlanta's Vision Zero plan aims to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2040" (April 26, 2024). https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2024/04/26/atlantas-vision-zero-plan-aims-to-eliminate-traffic-fatalities-by-2040/

10. Urbanize Atlanta, "New study pinpoints the 'most dangerous' roads in Atlanta." https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/new-atl-study-most-dangerous-roads-in-city

11. Atlanta News First, "Innocent 19-year-old killed in crash following police chase in Little Five Points; driver identified" (April 15, 2025). https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/04/15/police-chase-turns-deadly-atlantas-little-five-points/

12. 11Alive, "Fatal crash commission considers fixes for dangerous Atlanta intersection." https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/fatal-crash-commission-considers-fixes-dangerous-atlanta-intersection-five-points/85-887addd8-40ef-4b01-a1b2-16ac30223839

13. Streetsblog USA, "The Campaign to Fix Atlanta's Most Dangerous Street and Preserve Its Immigrant Cultures" (Sept. 21, 2017). https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/09/21/the-campaign-to-fix-atlantas-most-dangerous-street-and-preserve-its-immigrant-cultures

14. City of Doraville, "Buford Highway Safety Action Plan." https://www.doravillega.us/services/community_development/safety_action_plan.php

15. Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety, County Data Sheets. https://www.gahighwaysafety.org/county-data-sheets/