The deadliest highways and corridors in the Phoenix-Prescott area

A look at where Phoenix-Prescott's traffic deaths actually cluster, from I-17's wrong-way crashes to Prescott's mountain highways, using ADOT crash data and city safety records.

ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial
Jun 29, 2026
5 min read

The Phoenix-Prescott media market runs from the Valley's freeway stacks north through Prescott's mountain highways and out to Payson on the Beeline. In 2024, Maricopa County alone recorded 88,094 crashes and 594 traffic deaths, 72.74% of all crashes statewide and just under half of Arizona's 1,228 traffic fatalities that year.1 Yavapai County added 3,836 crashes and 63 deaths, up from 47 the year before.1 The roads below are where those numbers concentrate.

Where the Valley's crashes cluster

Phoenix itself logged 37,472 crashes in 2024, including 265 fatal crashes that killed 278 people.1 Mesa followed with 8,022 crashes and 48 deaths, Tempe with 6,637 crashes and 32 deaths, and Glendale with 5,218 crashes and 29 deaths.1 A lot of that traffic funnels through the Stack, where I-10 and I-17 meet just west of downtown, one of the busiest interchanges in the state highway system. ADOT's fix for the corridor just south of it, the I-10 Broadway Curve Improvement Project, finished construction on May 31, 2025, after four years of work widening 11 miles of I-10 between south of Ray Road and the I-17 split near Sky Harbor to six general-purpose lanes and two HOV lanes in each direction. Collector-distributor roads were added specifically to cut down on the weaving and last-second lane changes that had made the stretch a crash magnet.2

I-17's wrong-way problem

North of the Stack, I-17, the Black Canyon Freeway, carries its own reputation. ADOT data show two out of three wrong-way crashes involve an impaired driver, often with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, and three out of four happen between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.3 The freeway was the state's first test bed for a countermeasure: in November 2017, ADOT finished installing a $3.7 million system of 90 thermal cameras along 15 miles of I-17 between I-10 and Loop 101, the first system of its kind in the country.4 It has since flagged more than 300 wrong-way vehicles, alerting ADOT's traffic center and Arizona DPS troopers in real time.4 The system doesn't catch everything. On November 7, 2024, a driver went the wrong direction for roughly five miles before colliding head-on with another car near Jefferson Street in downtown Phoenix, killing 23-year-old Maria Vazquez and 29-year-old passenger Dayana Aguilar.5 ADOT has since extended thermal detection to Loop 202, Loop 303, and I-19, with the I-19 rollout expected to finish in winter 2025-2026.6

I-17 shows up in national rankings, too. Allstate's October 2025 riskiest-roads report, built from anonymized 2024 Drivewise driving-behavior data across the 50 largest U.S. cities, ranked I-17 northbound from exit 223B to State Route 74 (Carefree Highway, toward Wickenburg) as the sixth-riskiest road segment in the country. Saturday and Sunday afternoons were the most dangerous window; weekday rush hour, oddly, was the safest.7

Grand Avenue's diagonal squeeze

US 60, known locally as Grand Avenue, cuts diagonally across the Valley's street grid from downtown Phoenix through Glendale and Peoria into the northwest Valley, creating unusual intersections everywhere it crosses a numbered avenue. ADOT's fix for one of the worst of them, where Grand Avenue meets both 35th Avenue and Indian School Road and where a BNSF Railway line still crosses at grade, cleared its final environmental review in spring 2025.8 The rebuilt intersection will elevate 35th Avenue and Indian School Road over Grand Avenue so through traffic no longer stops for trains or cross streets. Construction is expected to start in summer 2027 and take about two years.8

Phoenix's own worst intersections

The city of Phoenix has been mapping its risk since September 2022, when the City Council approved a Vision Zero Road Safety Action Plan with $10 million a year in funding and a goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2050.9 The plan's High Injury Network, built from crash reports, counted 5,473 injury and fatal crashes from 2016 through 2020 concentrated on a small share of city streets. Three intersections ranked highest for fatalities and serious injuries: 43rd Avenue and Peoria Avenue, 67th Avenue and Thomas Road, and 19th Avenue and Union Hills Drive.9 Indian School Road between 91st and 39th avenues stood out enough on its own, with 39 fatal crashes and 85 serious-injury crashes from 2017 through 2021, that the city won a $25 million federal grant to redesign the corridor with new sidewalks, crossings, and lighting.9

Prescott and the mountain corridors

Yavapai County's roads carry a different kind of risk: two-lane mountain highways with sharp grades and blind curves. State Route 89 through Yarnell, on the descent between the Prescott area and Wickenburg, got a full ADOT safety overhaul completed August 23, 2023, restriping the road's two lanes in each direction down to one lane plus a center turn lane, specifically to stop the passing maneuvers and lane changes that had made the stretch dangerous for the town's pedestrians and its through traffic alike.10 State Route 69 has its own record: on June 5, 2026, a small SUV crossed all lanes of traffic near milepost 284, between Fain Road and Enterprise Parkway outside Prescott Valley, and collided head-on with a work truck, killing one person and leaving another with life-threatening injuries.11

Farther west, US 93 between Wickenburg and Congress keeps producing multi-fatality crashes. Three people died in November 2022 after a driver tried to pass in the wrong lane north of Wickenburg,12 and in July 2026 a collision involving a car hauler closed the highway and left two more dead about 30 miles north of town.13

The Beeline to Payson

State Route 87, the Beeline Highway connecting Phoenix and Mesa to Payson, has its own dark history. Between 1980 and 1996, as traffic on the narrow two-lane road quadrupled, 152 people died on the Beeline without a single fatality-free year, according to ADOT figures.14 That record drove a $170 million widening project, completed in 2001, that converted the highway from McDowell Road in Mesa north to State Route 188 into a divided four-lane road. In 2008, ADOT rebuilt the highway's intersection with the Bush Highway, a longtime crash site, into a grade-separated interchange.14

After a crash

Most of Arizona's traffic deaths, 775 of 1,228 in 2024, happened on local roads rather than the state highway system, a reminder that the risk isn't confined to the freeways with the highest name recognition.1 Anyone hurt on any of these roads is left sorting out the same practical questions afterward, including whether the case needs a lawyer. The legal directory lists attorneys who handle Arizona crash claims if you need help with that.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

  1. Arizona Department of Transportation, "2024 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts for the State of Arizona," published July 9, 2025: https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2024-Crash-Facts.pdf

  2. Arizona Department of Transportation, "The I-10 Broadway Curve Improvement Project is Complete": https://azdot.gov/news/i-10-broadway-curve-improvement-project-complete

  3. Arizona Department of Transportation, "Wrong-Way Drivers": https://azdot.gov/about/transportation-safety/wrong-way-drivers

  4. KTAR News, "ADOT's I-17 thermal camera system helping to detect wrong-way drivers": https://ktar.com/story/3361384/adots-i-17-thermal-camera-system-helping-to-detect-wrong-way-drivers/

  5. KTAR News, "Wrong-way collision on I-17 in Phoenix leaves 2 dead": https://ktar.com/arizona-news/wrong-way-collision-i-17-phoenix-2-killed/5624536/

  6. Arizona Department of Transportation, "ADOT's I-19 technology upgrades will include wrong-way detection": https://azdot.gov/news/adots-i-19-technology-upgrades-will-include-wrong-way-detection

  7. Allstate, "Allstate Reveals America's 10 Riskiest Roads for Drivers This Halloween," PR Newswire, October 15, 2025: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/allstate-reveals-americas-10-riskiest-roads-for-drivers-this-halloween-302583571.html

  8. Arizona Department of Transportation, "US 60 (Grand Avenue), 35th Avenue and Indian School Road Intersection Improvements": https://azdot.gov/projects/central-district-projects/us-60-grand-ave-35-ave-and-indian-school-rd-improvements

  9. City of Phoenix Street Transportation Department, "Road Safety Action Plan": https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/streets/safety-improvements/road-safety-action-plan.html

  10. Arizona Department of Transportation, "ADOT completes safety improvements to SR 89 in Yarnell": https://azdot.gov/news/adot-completes-safety-improvements-sr-89-yarnell

  11. The Daily Courier (Prescott), "One dead, one critically injured in crash on Highway 69 near Prescott Valley": https://www.dcourier.com/news/one-dead-one-critically-injured-in-crash-on-highway-69-near-prescott-valley/article_93c16ea1-fd3a-4664-98a6-a0b04b707a2e.html

  12. azfamily.com, "3 killed in crash on US 93 near Congress; driver tried to pass traffic using wrong lane, DPS says": https://www.azfamily.com/2022/11/03/3-killed-crash-us-93-near-congress-driver-tried-pass-traffic-using-wrong-lane-dps-says/

  13. azfamily.com, "Fiery crash leaves 2 dead, partially closes US 93 in Yavapai County": https://www.azfamily.com/2026/07/06/fiery-crash-leaves-2-dead-partially-closes-us-93-yavapai-county/

  14. Rim Country Museum, "A Highway Comes to Payson," citing Arizona Department of Transportation crash data: https://www.rimcountrymuseum.org/a-highway-comes-to-payson

About This Guide

Written by: ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial

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