Milwaukee's Deadliest Highways & Corridors

Milwaukee is driving in the wrong direction. While traffic fatalities fell across the rest of Wisconsin from 2002 to 2022, they rose 113.5 percent in Milwaukee County over that same 20 year stretch, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis of state crash data.¹ Speeding related fatal crashes in the county jumped 213 percent over that period even as they fell 55.1 percent everywhere else in the state.¹ Statewide, Wisconsin recorded 583 traffic deaths in 2023, a fatality rate of 0.87 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to federal highway data, but that number masks how much worse the trend is inside Milwaukee County.² Black residents of the county are 2.1 times more likely to die in a crash than the county average, a disparity that echoes a statewide pattern: fatality rates for Black Wisconsinites rose 9.8 percent and for Hispanic residents 45.3 percent between 2018 and 2022, even as the rate for white residents kept falling.³¹

A small number of named streets and interchanges account for a wildly disproportionate share of Milwaukee's crash deaths and serious injuries.

The corridors of concern

In 2023, Milwaukee County launched its Complete Communities Transportation Planning Project and published the county's first Transportation Safety Assessment, naming 25 "Corridors of Concern" based on five years of crash data from 2018 through 2022.³⁴ Fatal and serious injury crashes across the county rose 42 percent comparing 2020-2022 to 2010-2012, and county planners now count about 80 traffic deaths a year, on average.⁴ Beyond the well known streets, the county's own assessment also flags Kinnikinnic Avenue, 76th Street, and Howard Street, where a crash at 24th and Howard killed two people.³

Five corridors account for most of the fatal and serious injury total between 2018 and 2022:

27th Street/Layton Boulevard, 13.8 miles long: 26 fatal crashes, 101 serious injury crashes
Fond du Lac Avenue: 18 fatal crashes, 73 serious injury crashes
Capitol Drive: 15 fatal crashes, 69 serious injury crashes
Sherman Boulevard: 13 fatal crashes; Silver Spring Drive: 12 fatal crashes
North Avenue and Teutonia Avenue round out the top five for serious injuries, at 63 and 57

Capitol Drive and the intersection nobody wants to cross

Capitol Drive has carried Milwaukee's worst reputation for a decade. A count of crashes in 2016 and 2017 found 344 collisions on the street, about one every other day, with the intersection of Capitol Drive and North Sherman Boulevard ranking as the single worst spot in the city.⁵ Mayor Cavalier Johnson has said constituents tell him they are afraid to cross Capitol Drive on foot to reach the nearest grocery store.⁵

A joint Milwaukee Police Department and Wisconsin DOT review of three of the city's worst intersections, 35th Street/Burleigh/Fond du Lac Avenue, Capitol Drive and 51st Street, and 27th and Center Streets, found that one in three crashes at those locations caused a serious injury, compared with one in five crashes citywide. About one in eight drivers involved in a 2022 crash at those intersections had blown through a red light or stop sign, versus one in 20 citywide.⁶

27th Street, Center Street, and the Milwaukee Slide

North 27th Street has been called the city's deadliest road outright: it logged 12 traffic fatalities in 2020 alone, with Center Street close behind as the third deadliest that year.⁵ In 2020, reckless driving was blamed for 70 of Milwaukee's 78 traffic deaths, and roughly a third of them happened on just three streets, 27th, Fond du Lac, and Center.⁵ Officers use the term Milwaukee Slide for a maneuver common on these corridors, where drivers use a turn lane, parking lane, or bike lane to illegally pass stopped traffic on the right.⁵ The city's Traffic Safety Unit, created in 2021 with 20 officers, issued 21,500 citations in its first year alone.⁵

Teutonia Avenue and this summer's death toll

The problem hasn't gone away. Four pedestrians were killed on Milwaukee streets in the ten days between July 7 and July 17, 2026, including Amy Austin and May Daiber, struck by a hit-and-run driver near North Teutonia Avenue and West Vienna Avenue, and William "Winky" Rowsey, 70, killed near North 12th Street and West Atkinson Avenue.⁷⁸ A four block stretch of Teutonia Avenue between West Nash Street and West Capitol Drive logged 18 vehicle crashes between January 2025 and July 2026 alone, according to the city's Traffic Violence Dashboard.⁸ Milwaukee's Vision Zero policy director, Jessica Wineberg, has pushed for traffic safety cameras, which state law currently bars the city from installing, even though red light cameras are shown to cut fatalities by as much as half where they are allowed.⁷

Zoo Interchange and the I-94 rebuild

Milwaukee's freeways have their own history here. Before its reconstruction, the Zoo Interchange, where I-94, I-894, and Highway 45 meet on the city's west side, had crash rates running two to five times the statewide average because of closely spaced, opposing entrance and exit ramps.⁹ After WisDOT rebuilt the interchange's North Leg, on I-41 between Swan Boulevard and Burleigh Street in Wauwatosa, completed in November 2023, crash rates there fell 50 percent and rear end crashes fell 60 percent within a year.⁹

That same fix is now underway on I-94 itself. A $1.74 billion project is rebuilding 3.5 miles of freeway between North 16th and North 70th Streets, a corridor carrying 158,000 to 178,000 vehicles a day, replacing the Hawley Road interchange with a half interchange that eliminates ramps to and from the east, and eventually reconstructing the Stadium Interchange. Work began in October 2025 and isn't expected to wrap until 2033.¹⁰

What the county and city are doing, and what to do if you're hurt

Milwaukee County's Comprehensive Safety Action Plan lists 522 potential projects, with 142 already prioritized; county planners project a 38 percent reduction in fatal and serious injury crashes at the treated locations and an 18 percent drop countywide once it is built out.⁴ A $25 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant is now funding 65 of those projects along ten of the county's most hazardous corridors, expected to cut fatal and serious injury crashes there by 26 to 50 percent, plus another $8 million for city of Milwaukee work on North Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and West Forest Home Avenue, with everything due to wrap by 2031.¹¹

The city's own Vision Zero Action Plan, adopted in 2025, aims for zero traffic deaths by 2037. Early results show traffic deaths fell from a peak of 77 in 2022 to 57 in 2025, a 26 percent drop, though more than half of 2025's deaths were still concentrated on the city's High Injury Network of streets.¹²¹³ A protected redesign of West Lapham Boulevard cut median speeds 17 percent, cut the share of speeding drivers by nearly 70 percent, and produced zero life changing injury crashes in the year after it opened.¹³

If you're hurt in a crash on one of these corridors, the county's Motor Vehicle Collision Dashboard and the city's Traffic Violence Dashboard can help confirm where and how often crashes happen at that location.¹⁴ An attorney experienced in Wisconsin crash claims can help you sort out fault and insurance coverage; you can find one through the legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Wisconsin Policy Forum, "Traffic Deaths Surge in Milwaukee County While Falling Elsewhere," April 2024. https://wispolicyforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Focus_24_09_CrashFatalitiesUpdate.pdf
Federal Highway Administration, State Highway Safety Report, Wisconsin. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/reporting/state/safety.cfm?state=Wisconsin
CBS 58, "'People are fed up': Milwaukee County DOT releases transportation safety report." https://www.cbs58.com/news/people-are-fed-up-milwaukee-county-dot-releases-transportation-safety-report
TMJ4, "Milwaukee County's plan to combat reckless driving near 'Corridors of Concern' adopted, drivers react." https://www.tmj4.com/about-us/lighthouse/countys-plan-to-combat-reckless-driving-near-cooridors-of-concern-adopted-drivers-react
Milwaukee Magazine, "These People Are Working to Stop Milwaukee's Reckless Driving Epidemic." https://www.milwaukeemag.com/these-people-are-working-to-stop-milwaukees-reckless-driving-epidemic/
TMJ4, "These are the three most dangerous intersections in Milwaukee." https://www.tmj4.com/news/project-drive-safer/these-are-the-three-most-dangerous-intersections-in-milwaukee
Urban Milwaukee, "Four Pedestrians Killed in Days As Milwaukee Traffic Deaths Climb Again," July 17, 2026. https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2026/07/17/four-pedestrians-killed-in-days-as-milwaukee-traffic-deaths-climb-again/
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, "Community reacts to recent surge of reckless driving deaths," July 16, 2026. https://milwaukeenns.org/2026/07/16/community-reacts-to-recent-surge-of-reckless-driving-deaths/
Daily Reporter, "Zoo Interchange North Leg project wins national safety award," August 29, 2024. https://dailyreporter.com/2024/08/29/zoo-interchange-north-leg-project-wins-national-safety-award/
Urban Milwaukee, "Construction Starting On $1.7 Billion Interstate 94 Widening," October 15, 2025. https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/15/construction-starting-on-1-7-billion-interstate-94-widening/
Wisconsin Public Radio, "Milwaukee County awarded nearly $25 million in federal funding for street safety." https://www.wpr.org/news/milwaukee-county-awarded-nearly-25-million-federal-funding-street-safety
City of Milwaukee, Vision Zero. https://city.milwaukee.gov/VisionZero
Urban Milwaukee, "Early Data Shows Mayor's 'Vision Zero' Traffic Deaths Plan Is Working," March 9, 2026. https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2026/03/09/early-data-shows-mayors-vision-zero-traffic-deaths-plan-is-working/
Milwaukee County Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Collision Dashboard. https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/Department-of-Transportation/Complete-Communities-Transportation-Planning-Project/Motor-Vehicle-Collision-Dashboard

Milwaukee's Deadliest Highways and Corridors