Miami-Dade and Broward County drivers don't need a study to tell them I-95 gets ugly near Golden Glades or that the Palmetto Expressway backs up most weekday afternoons. But the data backs up the gut feeling, and it points to a fairly specific set of roads, interchanges, and intersections that account for a disproportionate share of the region's serious crashes.
The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro ranks 17th among the country's 101 largest metro areas for pedestrian danger in Smart Growth America's 2026 Dangerous by Design report, with an average annual pedestrian fatality rate of 3.4 per 100,000 residents and 1,062 pedestrian deaths counted between 2020 and 2024, up from 945 in the previous five-year window.1 Statewide, Florida's traffic fatalities are still running 28% above where they were a decade ago, even after a 15% decline since 2021, according to the transportation research nonprofit TRIP. Fatal and serious crashes cost Florida an estimated $99.2 billion in 2024 once medical bills, lost income, and the broader toll on quality of life are added up.2
The stretch of I-95 that starts at Golden Glades
If there's one location locals mention first, it's the Golden Glades Interchange, where I-95, the Palmetto Expressway, Florida's Turnpike, and several arterial roads converge in north Miami-Dade. It shows up again and again in local crash reports: a wrong-way crash that sent a car off a flyover ramp and roughly 300 feet into the grass below,3 and a separate incident where a Florida Highway Patrol trooper was seriously hurt after being struck while managing a construction zone in the express lanes.4
South of the interchange, FDOT is partway through a Project Development and Environment study covering about 6.6 miles of SR-9/I-95 from the Miami-Dade/Broward county line north past Griffin Road, evaluating interchange rebuilds at Sheridan Street, Stirling Road, and Griffin Road along with new express-lane access points. The study runs from April 2023 through December 2026, with an estimated construction cost of $389.2 million.5 That's a serious commitment for a stretch of interstate that's already six lanes wide in each direction, and it amounts to an admission that the interchange spacing through south Broward isn't working the way it should.
The Palmetto Expressway's slow-motion danger
SR 826, better known as the Palmetto Expressway, has its own dedicated FDOT safety study: an 8-mile PD&E study covering the corridor from US-1/Dixie Highway to NW 25th Street, in progress since 2017. FDOT's own project materials cite "speed differentials and lane weaving deficiencies between interchanges" as the problem it's trying to solve, with a public hearing scheduled for March 2026 and design work targeted for fiscal year 2027. Construction remains unfunded for now.6 In practice, that means merging airport traffic and commuters cutting across town collide in ways that are more about road geometry than bad luck.
US-441 and the corridors Broward keeps rebuilding
State Road 7, known locally as US-441, runs the length of Broward County as a signal-heavy commercial strip, the kind of road where left turns across four lanes of traffic are routine. FDOT District Four currently has multiple active projects along it, including transit corridor improvements through Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes and a separate rebuild of SR 7 from Commercial Boulevard to the Palm Beach County line.7 Returning to the same corridor for one construction project after another says something about how hard it is to engineer safety into a road built for strip malls rather than through-traffic.
Where Broward's crashes actually concentrate
The Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization's regional Safety Action Plan, developed with federal Safe Streets and Roads for All funding and a $1.25 million local match from the county, found 4,832 fatal and serious-injury crashes countywide: 1,014 deaths and 4,702 serious injuries, with 77% of them clustered on just 6% of Broward's streets.8 The plan names I-95, Broward Boulevard, Sunrise Boulevard, Oakland Park Boulevard, and A1A among the corridors carrying that risk. Two roads without the same name recognition rank surprisingly high on the county's own list: the 1.74-mile stretch of Rock Island Road between Royal Palm Boulevard and Southgate Boulevard came in 8th countywide, with 32 killed-or-serious-injury crashes between January 2018 and December 2022, and Royal Palm Boulevard itself ranked 11th, with 22.9
Miami-Dade's intersections with the worst records
Miami-Dade's Vision Zero program, established in 2021 with a goal of ending traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2040, puts the county's annual toll at close to 300 fatalities, with thousands more people seriously hurt.10 The county's own crash dashboard, which tracks 2019 through 2023, recorded 1,655 people killed or injured in 2023 alone, with 44% of those crashes involving a pedestrian, cyclist, or motorcyclist. Unincorporated Miami-Dade, not the city of Miami, logged the most crashes of any jurisdiction that year: 659 incidents resulting in 771 deaths or serious injuries.11
A few specific intersections stand out in that dataset. NW 17th Avenue at NW 127th Street recorded a fatal crash on June 12, 2023, plus multiple serious injuries the same year. SW 88th Street at SW 112th Avenue saw two fatal crashes in 2023. SW 40th Street at SW 42nd Avenue in Coral Gables had three serious-injury crashes that year, one of them involving seven people.11 The county is using a $16.2 million federal grant to fund infrastructure fixes at 24 of its highest-injury locations, and has already completed 21 of those safety projects.10
The intersection that used to be the worst in the country
Long before any of this data existed, Pines Boulevard and South Flamingo Road in Pembroke Pines had already earned a grim distinction. A 2001 State Farm Insurance study, built on 1999 and 2000 insurance claims, named it the most dangerous intersection in the United States, with 357 recorded crashes at the spot where an eight-lane road meets a six-lane road.12 City officials disputed the methodology at the time, but Pembroke Pines invested roughly $5 million in roadway improvements by 2006, and crashes there fell 64% over the following four years.12 It's a reminder that these rankings aren't permanent. Change the geometry and the signal timing, and the numbers move with them.
Hit-and-runs are a regional pattern
Miami-Dade and Broward have topped Florida's hit-and-run numbers, both in raw crash counts and in fatalities, for roughly the past decade, according to Florida Highway Patrol data reported by CBS News Miami.13 FHP has described the statewide totals as essentially flat for years despite public awareness campaigns. Leaving the scene of a fatal crash in Florida carries a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison.
After a crash on one of these roads
None of this changes what to do if you're in a crash on I-95, the Palmetto, US-441, or any other Broward or Miami-Dade street. Get medical attention even if you feel fine, and get a copy of the FHP or local police report. Get the other driver's insurance information, too, before anyone leaves the scene. If the crash happened at one of the locations above, that context, a documented high-injury corridor, an active FDOT safety project, can matter later when it's time to establish who was responsible. An attorney from the legal directory can help you sort out what that context is worth.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Smart Growth America, "2026 State and Metro Rankings," Dangerous by Design: https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/2026-dbd-rankings/
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TRIP, "Addressing America's Traffic Safety Crisis: Florida" news release, July 23, 2025: https://tripnet.org/reports/addressing-americas-traffic-safety-crisis-florida-news-release-07-23-2025/
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Hoodline, "Fatal Crash at Golden Glades Interchange on I-95 Causes Major Traffic Disruption in Miami," February 2025: https://hoodline.com/2025/02/fatal-crash-at-golden-glades-interchange-on-i-95-causes-major-traffic-disruption-in-miami/
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CBS News Miami, "FHP trooper, driver seriously injured after I-95 crash in Golden Glades Interchange": https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/fhp-trooper-driver-seriously-injured-after-i-95-crash-in-golden-glades-interchange/
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Florida Department of Transportation, I-95 South Broward PD&E Study: https://www.fdot.gov/projects/i95southbrowardpde/home
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Florida Department of Transportation, SR 826/Palmetto Expressway South PD&E Study: https://www.fdotmiamidade.com/826expresssouth
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Florida Department of Transportation District Four, SR 7/US 441 corridor construction projects, Broward County: https://www.d4fdot.com/bcfdot/SR7_Improvements_Project_in_Broward_County.asp
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Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, Safe Streets and Roads for All: https://www.browardmpo.org/major-initiatives/ss4a
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Broward County Community News, "Broward MPO and Broward County to Host Second Round of Broward Safety Action Plan Public Workshops in February": https://communitynewspapers.com/broward/broward-mpo-and-broward-county-to-host-second-round-of-broward-safety-action-plan-public-workshops-in-february/
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Miami-Dade County, Vision Zero: https://www.miamidade.gov/global/initiatives/visionzero/home.page
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NBC6 South Florida, "These are the areas with the most deadly or serious injury crashes in Miami-Dade": https://www.nbcmiami.com/dangerous-drive/the-areas-with-the-most-deadly-or-serious-injury-crashes-in-miami-dade/3534995/
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Pembroke Pines News, "Study shows Pembroke Pines once labeled crash capital of US": https://www.pembrokepinesflnews.com/news/local/article315449472.html
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CBS News Miami, "FHP Draws Attention To Hit-And-Run Crash Epidemic": https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/fhp-draws-attention-to-hit-and-run-crash-epidemic/