Denver logged 90 traffic deaths in 2025, its worst year for road fatalities since at least 2013, according to Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) figures reported by Westword.1 That's up from 80 deaths in 2024 and 83 in 2023.1 The total breaks down to 34 pedestrians, 28 people in vehicles, 13 motorcyclists, 9 e-scooter riders, and 5 cyclists.1 It's a grim milestone for a city that adopted Vision Zero, a pledge to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries, back in 2017, with a target date of 2030.2
Colorado as a whole didn't fare much better. The state's preliminary count for 2025 hit 701 deaths, up from 689 in 2024, with a late-year surge (deaths jumped 70% in November and December compared to the same months in 2024) that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) attributes partly to unusually warm weather keeping more vehicles, motorcycles especially, on the road deep into fall.3 Denver County tied Weld County for the most traffic deaths of any county in the state that year, at 76, a 21% jump over 2024.3 Separately, CDOT's count of alcohol- and drug-impaired driving deaths put Denver at 22 for 2025, behind only El Paso and Weld counties.4 The gap between DOTI's 90 and CDOT's 76 comes down to the two agencies drawing city and county boundaries, and reporting cutoffs, differently. It isn't a dispute about the trend.
None of this is spread evenly across the map. Denver has spent years tracking which streets produce the most deaths and serious injuries, and the pattern hasn't shifted much: a handful of wide, high-speed arterials do most of the damage.
The High Injury Network
City planners call it the High Injury Network, a set of streets identified through crash data as disproportionately dangerous.2 In the most recent analysis, the top tier of that network, just 50.5 miles of roadway citywide, accounted for 103 fatal crashes and 573 serious-injury crashes over a five-year study window, a rate of 13.4 deaths and serious injuries per mile. A typical local residential street sees a rate of 0.05.2 Nearly every corridor on the list is a wide arterial built to move regional traffic through neighborhoods rather than to keep the people living along it safe: Colorado Boulevard, Federal Boulevard, Santa Fe Avenue, Broadway, Colfax Avenue, and Alameda Avenue.2
Four stretches stood out enough that the city labeled them Vision Zero Safety Focus Areas, places needing immediate remedial work. Downtown Denver, just 2% of the city's land area, accounted for 20% of all fatal and serious-injury crashes and 22 deaths in the study period.2 South Federal Boulevard between Alameda and Yale avenues sits entirely within the highest-risk tier and recorded eight deaths.2 The East Colfax Avenue corridor between Park Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, along with the side streets that absorb its overflow traffic, recorded six.2 South Broadway and Lincoln Street between Colfax and Alameda recorded five.2
Interstate 25
No corridor killed more people in 2025 than I-25 itself, with 11 deaths recorded on the interstate within city limits.1 A late-November crash shows how these happen: a fuel tanker sped down the southbound off-ramp at Yale Avenue and struck an overpass abutment, spilling fuel beneath the highway and killing the driver. A toxicology report later showed alcohol and methamphetamine in his system.5 Weeks later, in December, a pedestrian was struck and killed in the southbound lanes near Alameda Avenue.6 Earlier in the year, in August, a driver was killed after being ejected from a vehicle in a hit-and-run on the northbound on-ramp at Speer Boulevard; the suspect was later arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide.7
DOTI's 2019 fix at I-25 and 20th Street shows the other side of the ledger. New pavement markings and signage turned a persistent crash hot spot into a stretch with zero serious crash reports the following year, though the location still saw one fatality in December 2021, a single-vehicle crash tied to speed and impairment.2
Federal Boulevard
Federal Boulevard recorded eight traffic deaths in 2025, second only to I-25.1 In October, a 15-year-old pedestrian was struck and killed near West 52nd Avenue.8 DOTI Director Amy Ford has pointed to speed as the common thread on Denver's worst roads, saying it's a factor in roughly 85% of the city's crashes and fatalities.8 That's part of why the city picked the stretch of Federal between West 52nd Avenue and Floyd Avenue as one of two test corridors for its SPEED program, an 18-month pilot that retimed signals to reset on red, added speed limit signage, and mailed tickets to drivers caught by license-plate cameras.1 The city has since said it's expanding the camera program, at a cost of roughly $2 million split across corridors, with Federal and Colorado Boulevard both getting more permanent enforcement.1
Colfax Avenue and Alameda Avenue
Colfax Avenue recorded five traffic deaths in 2025.1 The corridor's problems aren't new. On West Colfax between Sheridan Boulevard and Irving Street, the city's Rapid Response team logged seven deaths between November 2016 and October 2020, five of them pedestrians, tied to speeding mixed with pedestrian crossings at points without full signals. The city retimed signals and adjusted pedestrian walk intervals there in October 2020.2 On East Colfax, paint-and-post intersection treatments installed in January 2020 measurably cut driver-pedestrian conflicts in before-and-after counts.2
Alameda Avenue, Federal's counterpart in the SPEED pilot between Sheridan Boulevard and Havana Street, carries the same mix of speed and pedestrian exposure, and it was the site of one of 2025's fatal I-25 interchange crashes near its eastern end.6
Sixth Avenue and the rest of the network
Sixth Avenue rounds out 2025's deadliest corridors with three deaths.1 It's a smaller number, but it fits the broader pattern: Denver's most dangerous roads are almost all wide, signal-timed arterials or freeway segments, not narrow neighborhood streets. That's why the fixes DOTI keeps returning to, whether a corridor-wide camera program or a single retimed signal, tend to be about slowing cars down at scale. At West 8th Avenue and Speer Boulevard, retiming the signal cut total crashes by 27%.2
If you're hurt on one of these roads
Crashes on these corridors tend to be more severe than the citywide average, mostly because of how fast traffic moves on them. If you're injured in a crash on I-25, Federal, Colfax, Alameda, or Broadway, get a police report on file, get checked by a medical provider even if you feel fine at the scene, and hold onto photos, witness contact information, and the other driver's insurance details. An attorney who handles these cases regularly can help sort out fault and deal with insurers while you recover. You can start by searching the legal directory.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Westword, "Record Year for Denver Traffic Deaths Inspires Expanded Safety Measures," https://www.westword.com/news/denver-expands-road-safety-measures-after-record-traffic-deaths-40822440/
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City and County of Denver, Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, "Refocusing Vision Zero: 2022 Vision Zero Action Plan," https://denvergov.org/files/assets/public/v/5/vision-zero/documents/denver-vision-zero-action-plan.pdf
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Colorado Department of Transportation, "Warm weather coincides with increase in traffic deaths in 2025," Jan. 23, 2026, https://www.codot.gov/news/2026/january/increased-traffic-deaths-2025
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Colorado Department of Transportation, "El Paso, Weld, Denver and Adams counties had highest number of impairment traffic fatalities in 2025," Feb. 2026, https://www.codot.gov/news/2026/february-2026-news/counties-with-highest-number-impairment-traffic-fatalities-2025
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9News, "1 killed in fuel tanker crash on Yale Avenue at I-25," https://www.9news.com/article/traffic/crash-interstate-25-yale-ave/73-8b8e7cde-d39b-4f9c-8e59-b5911bf0f113
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KDVR, "Pedestrian killed in SB I-25 crash near Alameda," https://kdvr.com/news/local/sb-i-25-closed-near-alameda-after-crash-involving-pedestrian/
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9News, "1 killed in hit-and-run on I-25 and Speer ramp," https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/deadly-hit-and-run-i-25-speer-ramp/73-f28defaa-1a6a-43d0-b703-9f3c59142bba
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Colorado Politics, "Pedestrian fatalities soar 50% in Denver, city officials say," Oct. 2, 2025, https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2025/10/02/pedestrian-fatalities-soar-50-in-denver-city-officials-say/