Chicago's Deadliest Highways and Corridors

Chicago recorded 130 traffic deaths in 2024, the lowest single-year total since 2019 and well down from the 186 killed during the 2021 pandemic-era peak.¹ That's real progress. It's also not proof the roads got safer everywhere at once. The same expressways and arterial corridors show up in the city's crash data year after year, and the numbers so far in 2026 look like more of the same: 8 people died in January alone, up from 5 in January 2025, on a list of streets that will look familiar to anyone who drives here.¹

The city keeps its expressways off its own scoreboard

Here's a quirk of how Chicago counts its own crashes: the Chicago Department of Transportation's annual review excludes the interstate system entirely, with one deliberate exception. Crashes on the limited-access portions of DuSable Lake Shore Drive stay in CDOT's dataset, while the Dan Ryan, Kennedy, and Eisenhower don't.² That's a matter of jurisdiction, since interstates get tracked separately by IDOT and the tollway authority, and it's why Lake Shore Drive keeps turning up in CDOT's monthly fatal-crash lists. A driver died there in January 2026 after losing control and striking the median near 2500 S Lake Shore Dr SB.¹

The expressways get tracked elsewhere. The Illinois Department of Transportation puts the Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) at roughly 2,000 crashes a year, and it's currently the subject of a federal environmental study covering 13 miles from the I-88/I-290 interchange out to Racine Avenue, running through Chicago, Oak Park, Forest Park, and five other municipalities.³ Most of that infrastructure dates to the corridor's original construction in the 1950s, when the Eisenhower became the first expressway in the country built with a rapid transit line, originally the CTA's Congress Line and now part of the Blue Line, running down its median.³ Further out, the Illinois Tollway is nearly a decade into a $4 billion, 22-mile rebuild of the Tri-State Tollway (I-294) between Balmoral Avenue and 95th Street, a corridor that carries more than 300,000 vehicles a day and won't be finished until 2027.⁴

Forty-three corridors, mostly on the West and South Sides

Below the expressway level, Chicago has had a formal list of its most dangerous streets since 2018. The Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan used crash data to name 43 High Crash Corridors and eight High Crash Areas; seven of those eight areas sit on the West and South Sides, with the eighth downtown.⁵ Milwaukee Avenue became the pilot corridor, with CDOT narrowing vehicle lanes, adding dashed bike lanes, cutting the speed limit, and closing two slip lanes on the stretch between Western Avenue and Division Street.⁵ The city has since run the same playbook on Pulaski Road between 40th and 71st Streets, on 87th Street from Wabash to St. Lawrence, on Cottage Grove Avenue near 111th Street, on Chicago Avenue between Austin and Central, and on Kedzie Avenue at the Daley Library.²

Where the deaths actually cluster

CDOT's own community-area breakdown for 2023 puts Austin at the top: 135 people killed or seriously injured, nearly double the Loop's 75 and well ahead of the Near West Side's 112.² Citywide, Ward 28, which stretches across Austin, the Garfield Parks, and North Lawndale, logged more killed-or-seriously-injured victims than any other ward: 153.² The pattern isn't subtle. CDOT's crash-density heat map shows the West Side, anchored by Austin and the Garfield Parks, and the South Side, centered on Greater Grand Crossing, both rivaling the Loop and Near North Side for concentration of severe crashes, despite carrying far less traffic.²

The disparity runs deeper than geography. Black Chicagoans were killed in traffic crashes at 3.8 times the rate of all other residents in 2021, the most recent year with complete race data.² Areas the city classifies as facing the highest mobility and economic hardship hold 32% of Chicago's population and 40% of its road miles, but accounted for 54% of pedestrian deaths.²

Speed, size, and running the light

CDOT's crash reviewers keep landing on the same three culprits. Speeding was a factor in 68% of 2023 fatalities. Reckless or egregious driving, a category that covers erratic lane changes, wrong-way driving, and jumping curbs, showed up in 84% of them, and 18% involved a driver who ran a stop sign or red light.² Vehicle size matters too: 48% of pedestrians killed in 2023 were struck by an SUV or larger vehicle, and streets wider than 50 feet see 14 times more fatal crashes per mile than narrower ones.²

What January looked like on the ground

The city's most recent monthly summary is a plain list of where this actually happens. In January 2026 alone: a driver died after sideswiping another car and hitting a pole at 4990 S Western Avenue; a passenger was killed when a car struck a pole at 3434 E 95th Street; two separate angle crashes killed drivers at 1938 E 92nd Street and 9206 S Stony Island Avenue; a pedestrian was struck and killed at 9498 S Lafayette Avenue; and a cyclist was killed by a driver on West Irving Park Road near Narragansett Avenue.¹ Four of those eight fatalities happened within about a mile of each other, on and around 92nd and 95th Streets on the South Side.¹

Citywide, our own tracking shows 109,112 crashes across 2025, down slightly from 112,055 in 2024, with 9,461 more logged in January 2026 alone.⁶⁷⁸ CDOT's narrower count, which excludes the interstates, shows crashes still climbing: 92,006 in 2024 versus 90,043 in 2023, and 25,586 people injured or killed last year versus 23,479 the year before.¹

The 2026 goal that won't be met

Vision Zero Chicago was launched in 2017 with a target of eliminating traffic deaths by 2026. That's not going to happen. CDOT can point to a real number in its defense: fatalities are down 27% from the 2021 peak, compared to a 5% national decline over the same stretch.² The city credits protected bike lanes, raised crosswalks, curb bump-outs, and narrower travel lanes, and it has a specific example to show for it. In Belmont Cragin, pedestrian and cyclist deaths and serious injuries fell 20% since 2021 after CDOT added 22 miles of bike lanes and two dozen Divvy stations, and cycling trips in the neighborhood rose 83%.² The annual crash review itself exists because the City Council requires it, under Chapter 9-116 of the Municipal Code of Chicago.⁹

If you were hurt on one of these roads

If a crash on the Eisenhower, on Stony Island Avenue, or on any of the corridors above left you or someone you know injured, the location itself can matter to a claim, since some of these streets have documented histories of speeding, reckless driving, or design problems CDOT has already acknowledged in writing. An attorney who knows how to pull that crash history can put it to use. You can find one through our legal directory.

This article provides general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Chicago Department of Transportation, "Fatal Traffic Crash Monthly Summary, January 2026" (Updated February 17, 2026): https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/sites/complete-streets/pdfs/MonthlySummary/2026/Fatal%20Traffic%20Crash%20Monthly%20Summary_January%202026.pdf

2. Chicago Department of Transportation, "Chicago Traffic Crashes Annual Report" (Published Fall 2024): https://api.chicago.gov/filenet5/servlets/getDocumentContent?applicationId=CompleteStreets&documentId=%7B60FB7292-0000-CB1B-AC4D-334F5F94606B%7D

3. Illinois Department of Transportation, "Cook County: I-290 Eisenhower Expressway" project overview: https://idot.illinois.gov/programs-and-projects/featured-projects/cook-county-i-290-eisenhower-expressway/overview.html

4. Illinois Tollway, "Central Tri-State Tollway (I-294) Reconstruction": https://agency.illinoistollway.com/projects/tri-state/central-tri-state-reconstruction

5. City of Chicago, "City of Chicago Marks One Year Since Launch of Vision Zero Action Plan to Eliminate Traffic Fatalities and Serious Injuries" (June 13, 2018): https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdot/provdrs/future_projects_andconcepts/news/2018/june/city-of-chicago-marks-one-year-since-launch-of-vision-zero-actio.html

6. ThatCarHitMe.com, "Chicago Year-over-Year Crash Report, 2025 vs 2024": https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/2025-annual-report

7. ThatCarHitMe.com, "Chicago Crash Report, 2024": https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/2024-annual-report

8. ThatCarHitMe.com, "Chicago Crash Report, January 2026": https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/illinois/chicago/january-2026-report

9. Municipal Code of Chicago, Chapter 9-116, "Traffic Crash Review and Analysis": https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/chicago/latest/chicago_il/0-0-0-2649561