Cincinnati's deadliest highways and corridors, by the numbers

The interstates carry the worst of it

Hamilton County logged 53 traffic deaths in 2025, and three interstates, I-75, I-71 and I-275, accounted for more crashes than any other roads in the county.¹ Statewide, Ohio recorded 264,954 crashes that year.² Zoom in on where Greater Cincinnati's crashes cluster and a familiar pattern shows up: the same handful of corridors, intersections and interchanges turn up year after year in state and city crash data. Here's what that data actually says about where crashes happen most in this region, and why.

Ohio State Highway Patrol data for Hamilton County shows I-75 logged 2,120 crashes in 2025 alone, up from 1,600 in 2023. I-71 followed with 1,473 crashes in 2025, and I-275 with 1,182. Combined, those three interstates accounted for nearly 13,000 crashes in the county over 2023 through 2025.¹

Some of the incidents behind those numbers are almost routine, which is part of the problem. On February 19, 2026, a driver traveling 70 mph in wet weather on eastbound I-275 rear-ended a stopped SUV near mile marker 33, touching off a three-vehicle chain reaction. The driver was cited for failing to maintain an assured clear distance.¹ Speed was a factor in 1,884 Hamilton County crashes in 2025, and failure to yield in another 3,745.¹

These interstates are also some of the most congested truck corridors in the country. The American Transportation Research Institute ranks the I-71/I-75 split downtown, just north of the Brent Spence Bridge, as the ninth-worst truck bottleneck in the nation, with average speeds dropping to 35.5 mph during peak hours. The interchange where I-71 and I-75 meet I-275 on the north side ranks 45th.³

The Brent Spence Bridge and the Cut in the Hill

The Brent Spence Bridge carries both I-71 and I-75 across the Ohio River and opened in 1963, designed for roughly 80,000 vehicles a day. It now carries close to double that volume, plus more than $1 billion in freight daily, according to OKI, the region's federally designated transportation planning agency.⁴ The double-decker bridge deck and the steep, curving approach on the Kentucky side, long nicknamed the Cut in the Hill, combine grade, speed and merging traffic in a way that's kept this stretch near the top of regional safety and congestion lists for decades. A companion bridge and ramp overhaul, the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project, is now under construction along an eight-mile span of I-71/75 through downtown Cincinnati and Covington.⁴

Colerain Avenue and the west side arterials

Move off the interstates and Colerain Avenue is the name that keeps coming up. Ohio Department of Transportation District 8 data has repeatedly flagged Colerain Avenue intersections, including Virginia Avenue, North Bend Road, West Galbraith Road, Redskin Drive and Round Top Road, for generating more crashes than their traffic volume would predict, a measure ODOT calls expected excess crashes.⁵⁶ Cincinnati's own police-reported crash data backs that up: the 5500 and 4400 blocks of Colerain Avenue combined for roughly 250 crashes between 2023 and 2025.⁷

Colerain isn't the only corridor with a pattern. Cincinnati's crash database, which tracks every police-reported collision in the city, shows several other streets clustering near the top of the list for that same three-year window:⁷

• Mitchell Avenue near the I-75 interchange in Camp Washington
• Calhoun Street and McMillan Street around the University of Cincinnati in Clifton
• Harrison Avenue through Westwood
• Glenway Avenue in West Price Hill
• Hopple Street, where ODOT's Thru the Valley rebuild of I-75 through the Mill Creek Valley meets local traffic
• The Norwood Lateral, the short state-route connector between I-71 and I-75

Westwood and the downtown riverfront recorded the most total crashes of any Cincinnati neighborhoods from 2023 through 2025, with West Price Hill, Bondhill, Camp Washington and Clifton close behind.⁷

Pedestrians and cyclists carry a disproportionate share of the risk

A 2026 OKI analysis of a decade of crash data found that arterial roads make up only about 10% of roadway miles across the region but account for roughly half of all fatal and serious injury crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.⁸ The study covered all eight OKI counties: Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont in Ohio, Boone, Kenton and Campbell in Kentucky, and Dearborn in Indiana.⁹ Speed matters enormously. A pedestrian struck at 25 mph has roughly a 1-in-5 chance of death or serious injury, and that risk climbs to 50% at 35 mph.⁸ Lighting matters too: streets with fewer than 16 streetlights per mile saw fatal or serious outcomes in 27% of nighttime crashes, compared with 15% on streets with 53 or more streetlights per mile.⁸

Within Cincinnati specifically, the trend has been improving. The city recorded 10 pedestrian deaths in 2023, six in 2024 and five in 2025.¹⁰

The city is trying to slow drivers down

Cincinnati's Department of Transportation and Engineering has leaned on its Complete Streets policy, adding bike lanes, raised crosswalks and speed cushions as streets come up for repaving.¹¹ In 2025 the city installed three raised crosswalks, 58 speed cushions, 23 speed humps, 19 stop signs and nearly 1,000 new or improved streetlights.¹⁰ The results on individual streets have been substantial. On Beechmont Avenue in Mount Washington, the share of drivers exceeding 40 mph dropped from 25% to 3% after traffic calming went in, and average speeds on Warsaw Avenue in East Price Hill fell from 37 mph to 16 mph.¹² Citywide, streets that got these treatments saw speeding drop by an average of 48%, though on some untreated streets close to 90% of drivers still exceed the posted limit.¹²

What to do if you're hurt on one of these roads

If you're in a crash on I-75, Colerain Avenue or any other corridor on this list, the basics still apply: call police so there's an official report, get checked out medically even if you feel fine, and photograph the scene and vehicle damage before anything gets moved or repaired. Because these locations show up so consistently in ODOT and city crash data, a report that clearly documents the exact intersection or mile marker and the conditions at the time can matter later, especially if the road itself, not just the other driver, turns out to be part of the story. If you need help finding an attorney, thatcarhitme.com's legal directory lists options across the region.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Ohio Traffic Safety Office / Ohio State Highway Patrol, "Hamilton County Traffic Crashes Fast Facts" (April 2026), https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Hamilton.pdf

2. thatcarhitme.com, "Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report — 2025", https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/2025-annual-report

3. American Transportation Research Institute, "Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks 2026", https://truckingresearch.org/2026/02/top-100-truck-bottlenecks-2026/

4. OKI Regional Council of Governments, "Brent Spence Bridge", https://www.oki.org/news-events/brent-spence-bridge/

5. WCPO, "Three Colerain Avenue intersections rated among state's most dangerous", https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/three-colerain-avenue-intersections-rated-among-states-most-dangerous

6. Local12 / Cincinnati Business Courier, "These are Southwest Ohio's most dangerous intersections", https://local12.com/news/local/these-are-southwest-ohios-most-dangerous-intersections-colerain-avenue-department-transportation-cincinnati-business-courier

7. City of Cincinnati, "Traffic Crash Reports (CPD)", data.cincinnati-oh.gov, https://data.cincinnati-oh.gov/safety/Traffic-Crash-Reports-CPD-/rvmt-pkmq

8. OKI Regional Council of Governments, "OKI Vulnerable Road User Crash Analysis 2015-2024", https://www.oki.org/oki-crash-study-pedestrians-cyclists-at-highest-risk-speed-and-road-design-lead-to-severe-consequences/

9. NKyTribune, "OKI study shows why pedestrians, cyclists face disproportionate risk on region's roadways", https://nkytribune.com/2026/07/oki-study-shows-why-pedestrians-cyclists-face-disproportionate-risk-on-regions-roadways/

10. WVXU, "Pedestrian deaths, serious injuries are down in Cincinnati", https://www.wvxu.org/local-news/2026-03-23/pedestrian-deaths-serious-injuries-down-cincinnati

11. City of Cincinnati Department of Transportation & Engineering, "City Releases First Annual Complete Streets Report", https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/dote/news/city-releases-first-annual-complete-streets-report/

12. Cincinnati CityBeat, "Cincinnati speeding drops nearly 50% after roadway improvements", https://www.citybeat.com/news/cincinnati-news/cincinnati-traffic-calming-pedestrian-safety-results/