Richmond and Petersburg's deadliest highways and corridors

Virginia's most recent statewide count, compiled by the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Virginia Highway Safety Office, logged 129,244 crashes and 918 deaths on the state's roads in 2024¹. In the Richmond-Petersburg market, that toll doesn't spread out evenly. It concentrates on a short, familiar list of roads: I-95 through the capital, Chippenham Parkway, Hull Street Road, Jefferson Davis Highway, a cluster of Henrico intersections, and a couple of Petersburg crossings that keep showing up in the same police reports.

I-95's designated danger zone

The 13-mile stretch of I-95 running from Bells Road on Richmond's south side to Parham Road on the north side carries an official label most drivers never notice: a Highway Safety Corridor². VDOT, Virginia State Police, and the DMV created the designation in 2003 for roads posting a crash rate more than double the state average, and this stretch of I-95 qualified². Inside the corridor, traffic infractions carry fines up to $500, and criminal offenses like reckless driving or DUI can bring fines up to $2,500². Signs mark the start of the zone and repeat after every interchange.

One trouble spot inside that corridor is the interchange where I-95 meets Commerce Road, Walmsley Boulevard, and Bells Road on the south side of the city. VDOT has flagged the ramp configuration there as a "Potential for Safety Improvement" segment, citing difficult weaving movements between the ramps and the connecting arterials as a recurring cause of crashes³.

Chippenham Parkway: the one road built for speed

Chippenham Parkway is the only road inside Richmond city limits with a speed limit above 35 mph, and city officials say that alone sets it apart on the crash map⁴. When Richmond made its internal speed dashboard public in 2025, it showed drivers on South Belvidere Street routinely hitting 56 to 60 mph in a 35 mph zone, with Jahnke Road, Westover Hills Boulevard, and Forest Hill Avenue flagged as other speeding hot spots feeding into the same corridor⁴.

The parkway's crash history backs that up. On June 2, 2025, a driver crossed the median near the Huguenot Road interchange and struck two southbound vehicles; 31-year-old Tiana Baker of Chesterfield County died at the hospital⁵. In February 2024, 52-year-old Ronald Fountain of Richmond ran off the road and hit a jersey wall on the parkway, a crash he didn't survive⁶. Chesterfield County Police later ran an online poll asking residents which road to target for the department's next traffic enforcement push. Chippenham Parkway won, and officers spent a day in March stopping 236 vehicles and writing 313 summonses along the route⁷.

Hull Street Road and Jefferson Davis Highway

Chesterfield's other two problem corridors are older commercial strips rather than limited-access highways, and pedestrians pay for it. On Hull Street Road (Route 360), a child was killed in June 2023 when a sedan struck a pickup truck pulled onto the shoulder near the Route 603 (Skinquarter Road) intersection⁸. In August 2025, a 27-year-old woman crossing Hull Street Road was struck and killed by four separate vehicles in what police called a rare, layered collision⁹. A few miles east on Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1), 68-year-old Barbara Royster of Chesterfield was struck and killed crossing the road in September 2024, one of several pedestrian deaths reported on that corridor in recent years¹⁰.

Henrico's repeat-crash intersections

Two Henrico corridors show the same pattern: the same location, crash after crash. At Nine Mile Road and Laburnum Avenue, a wreck on December 10, 2024 was the seventh reported crash at that single intersection that year; employees at a nearby store told 8News they see near-misses almost weekly¹¹. A few miles north, Staples Mill Road recorded three pedestrian deaths in 2024 alone: Andre Antonio Messado on January 29, a two-year-old child near Townhouse Road on August 29, and 15-year-old Nathaniel Clark near Hungary Spring Road on September 8¹². Back-to-back crashes on the same stretch the following summer pushed neighbors to demand changes again¹³.

Richmond's high injury network

Richmond doesn't rely on guesswork to find its worst roads. Police track what they call a high injury network, a mapped set of streets responsible for a disproportionate share of harm: about 76% of the city's traffic deaths and serious injuries occur on just 9% of its street network, and the Broad and Belvidere Street intersection sits inside it¹⁴. After six pedestrians died within about three weeks spanning late 2025 and early 2026, Mayor Danny Avula fast-tracked left-turn hardening at more than 80 high-injury-network intersections, ordered 14 new pedestrian hybrid beacons for midblock crossings, and directed a safety assessment of East Broad Street between 1st and 14th streets¹⁵. The push followed a year in which Richmond Police credited stepped-up enforcement, 200 new speed tables, and roundabout conversions with cutting the city's traffic deaths from 25 in 2023 to 17 in 2024, a 32% drop¹⁴.

Petersburg's crossings

Petersburg's danger zones are smaller in scale but no less persistent. Downtown, the intersection of East Washington Street and South Sycamore Street has a signal-timing flaw: drivers get a green left-turn arrow at the same moment pedestrians get a walk signal. Glenn Harris, who uses a motorized wheelchair, said he was hit crossing that intersection twice in 2025, and now waits for the arrow to go dark before stepping into the crosswalk, technically jaywalking to avoid a legal crossing that isn't actually safe¹⁶. VDOT separately completed a targeted crash study of South Crater Road (Route 301) and its Wagner Road intersections in late 2024, part of the state's ongoing effort to flag high-crash locations for engineering fixes¹⁷.

Where the death rate is actually highest

Raw crash counts favor the suburbs. Chesterfield logged 6,191 crashes and 33 deaths in 2024, and Henrico logged 5,479 crashes and 48 deaths, the highest fatality count of any locality in the market¹. But measured against the number of licensed drivers, the most dangerous places to drive are the rural counties south of Petersburg. Dinwiddie County's death rate was 0.55 per 1,000 licensed drivers in 2024, and Prince George County's was 0.51; both are more than three times the statewide rate of 0.15¹. Petersburg itself recorded 930 crashes and 4 deaths, while neighboring Hopewell logged 358 crashes and no traffic deaths at all¹.

If a crash on any of these roads has left you dealing with injuries or an insurance fight, the road's crash history and any related VDOT or police data can matter for your case. An attorney familiar with the corridor can help you sort out what applies; you can start looking in the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. 2024 Virginia Traffic Crash Facts, Virginia DMV and Virginia Highway Safety Office: https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/documents/VA-traffic-crash-2024.pdf

2. Highway Safety Corridors, Virginia Department of Transportation: https://www.vdot.virginia.gov/about/programs/highway-safety-corridors

3. I-95 and Bells Road interstate access study in Richmond, Virginia Department of Transportation: https://www.vdot.virginia.gov/projects/richmond-district/i-95-and-bells-road-interstate-access-study-in-richmond/

4. "Richmond makes speed data dashboard public," 12 On Your Side (WWBT): https://www.12onyourside.com/2025/07/30/richmond-makes-speed-data-dashboard-public-no-place-outside-chippenham-parkway-is-over-35-miles-an-hour/

5. "Chesterfield woman killed, two men seriously hurt in Richmond 3-vehicle crash," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/chesterfield-woman-killed-chippenham-parkway-crash/

6. "Richmond man dead after crashing into jersey wall on Chippenham Parkway in Chesterfield," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/chesterfield-county/richmond-man-dead-after-crashing-into-jersey-wall-on-chippenham-parkway-in-chesterfield/

7. Police Release Results of Chippenham Parkway Traffic Enforcement Operation, Chesterfield County, VA: https://www.chesterfield.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=5892

8. "Child killed in Chesterfield crash," WTVR CBS 6: https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/multi-vehicle-crash-hull-street-road-chesterfield-june-5-2023

9. "'Mind-blowing': Woman hit, killed by four vehicles in Chesterfield crash," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/chesterfield-county/woman-hit-killed-vehicles-hull-street-road/

10. "Pedestrian killed in crash identified as 68-year-old Chesterfield woman," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/chesterfield-county/pedestrian-killed-in-crash-identified-as-68-year-old-chesterfield-woman/

11. "Henrico neighbors frustrated with road safety after deadly crash," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/henrico-county/nine-mile-road-safety-concerns/

12. "Her son was killed crossing the street. Now she's pushing Henrico to improve pedestrian safety," WTVR CBS 6: https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/henrico-pedestrian-safety-oct-22-2024

13. "'It looked very horrendous': Back-to-back crashes on Staples Mill Road raise safety concerns," WRIC ABC 8News: https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/henrico-county/it-looked-very-horrendous-back-to-back-crashes-on-staples-mill-road-raise-safety-concerns/

14. Agency Spotlight: Richmond Police Achieve 32% Reduction in Traffic-Related Fatalities in 2024, Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police & Foundation: https://www.vachiefs.org/news/agency-spotlight-richmond-police-achieve-32-reduction-in-traffic-related-fatalities-in-2024

15. "Mayor Avula fast-tracks Vision Zero changes after six pedestrian deaths in three weeks," RVAHub: https://rvahub.com/2026/01/09/mayor-avula-fast-tracks-vision-zero-changes-after-six-pedestrian-deaths-in-three-weeks/

16. "Petersburg neighbors demand safety changes at downtown crosswalk," WTVR CBS 6: https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/petersburg-crosswalk-safety-changes-march-19-2026

17. S Crater Road (VA 301) City of Petersburg, Virginia Project Pipeline / Virginia Department of Transportation: https://vaprojectpipeline.virginia.gov/media/va-project-pipeline/documents/ri/RI-23-06-Final-Report_acc12262024_PM.pdf