San Diego County sees more than 250 fatal crashes a year, on average, which works out to nearly three people killed or seriously injured on the region's roads every single day. Between 2018 and 2022, SANDAG counted 4,433 lives lost or permanently changed by crashes on local streets and highways.1 A lot of that damage is concentrated on a small slice of pavement: SANDAG's Safety Focus Network shows that just 6% of the regional transportation network accounts for 54% of all fatal and serious-injury crashes.1 If you got in a wreck in San Diego this year, there's a good chance it happened on one of the same corridors that show up on that list year after year.
The freeways have a wrong-way problem
Interstate 8, Interstate 5, Interstate 805, State Route 163 and State Route 94 carry the bulk of San Diego's freeway traffic, and they also carry a problem specific to this region: wrong-way drivers entering off-ramps at night. Caltrans District 11, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties, has spent years testing fixes at ramp junctions after a string of head-on collisions on I-8, I-5 and SR-163.2 In January 2024, a wrong-way driver heading east in the westbound lanes of I-8 near SR-163 in Del Cerro struck another car head-on, killing 49-year-old Cecilia Echeverria. The driver, Briana Contreras, later pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and was sentenced to six years in state prison.3
District 11's response has been to retrofit exit ramps with red reflective pavement markers and LED-lit "Do Not Enter" signs that flash when a wrong-way vehicle is detected by radar, alerting both Caltrans and CHP in real time.4 The agency says the reflectors alone cut wrong-way entries by 44% at San Diego pilot locations, and the technology has since gone in on close to 700 ramps districtwide, with a Director's Order adding upgrades at 74 more ramps across 13 routes.2
Freeway crashes here aren't limited to wrong-way collisions. Four people died in a single-vehicle rollover on eastbound SR-94 near Home Avenue early on Thanksgiving morning 2023, after witnesses told CHP the car may have been going upward of 100 mph.5 Farther south, SR-905 through Otay Mesa, the corridor that funnels traffic to and from the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings, saw two people killed in October 2024 when a car fleeing Border Patrol agents slammed into a parked Caltrans truck.6
University Avenue, Imperial Avenue and the city's own worst list
Every year, the City of San Diego's Transportation Department runs the numbers on which intersections crash the most relative to how much traffic they carry, and the 2025 results read like a map of the city's older arterial grid. Judicial Drive at Nobel Drive in University City topped the list with a crash rate nearly double the citywide average, on just 16,689 vehicles a day.7 Close behind: 26th Street at Florida Drive, Imperial Avenue at both 53rd Street and San Jacinto Drive in Encanto, and 54th Street at University Avenue.7 The city's own analysis flagged University Avenue between Chollas Parkway and 54th Street as the single segment with the most injury crashes of any stretch of road in San Diego that year, and 5th Avenue at Broadway, downtown, had more pedestrian crashes than any other intersection in the city.7
That 2025 memo builds on a similar review of 2024 data that pushed the city to prioritize 14 locations for near-term fixes, among them 8th Avenue at Broadway, Bayard Street at Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach, Fairmount Avenue near Montezuma Road, Mission Gorge Road between Twain Avenue and Mission Gorge Place, and Otay Center Drive at Siempre Viva Road out toward the border.8 Crews have already added signage and crosswalk striping at some of those; others are waiting on capital funding to come through.8
Who's most at risk
San Diego County ranked first among all 58 California counties for motorcycle-related fatal and injury collisions in 2023, with 1,693 recorded.9 Pedestrians accounted for 1,122 of the county's fatal and injury crashes that year, 17th-worst statewide, and bicyclists another 893, 11th-worst.9 The trend line isn't encouraging. UC Berkeley's Transportation Injury Mapping System, drawing on statewide SWITRS crash records, shows 78 traffic deaths in the city of San Diego in 2014, climbing to a peak of 124 in 2022 and settling at 115 in 2024, a 47.4% increase over the decade.10 Over that same stretch, San Diego Police Department traffic stops fell nearly 57%, from more than 144,000 in 2014 to just over 62,000 in 2024.10
What's changing, and how slowly
The city's response leans on a 2022 federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, $680,000 that helped fund a Comprehensive Speed Management Plan released in February 2026.11 Using new authority under state Assembly Bills 43, 1938 and 382, the plan found that 679.1 of San Diego's roughly 3,185 centerline miles of city streets, just over 20%, qualify for lower posted speeds: 189.6 miles as designated safety corridors, plus separate mileage for high pedestrian and bicycle activity corridors, business districts, and 371.1 miles of school zones eligible for 15-20 mph limits.11 It's a real change in how the city can set speed limits on paper. In practice, implementation isn't scheduled to begin until fiscal year 2027, and only if the City Council funds it.11 For now, the corridors on this page are the same ones they were last year.
If you're hurt on one of these roads
If you're in a crash on I-8, University Avenue, SR-94 or any of the other corridors above, get a CHP or San Diego Police report number at the scene if you can, and see a doctor even if you feel fine. Adrenaline hides injuries for days. An attorney familiar with San Diego's crash-prone corridors can help you request the police report, deal with the insurance company, and figure out what your case is actually worth. You can find one through our legal directory.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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SANDAG, "Vision Zero" — https://www.sandag.org/projects-and-programs/regional-initiatives/vision-zero
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Caltrans, Mile Marker: A Caltrans Performance Report, Issue 2023-2, "Wrong-way prevention" — https://dot.ca.gov/programs/public-affairs/mile-marker/2023-2/wrong-way
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Times of San Diego, "Woman Sentenced 6 Years For Fatal Wrong Way Interstate 8 DUI Crash" — https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2025/01/09/woman-sentenced-6-years-for-fatal-wrong-way-interstate-crash/
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Caltrans News Release 2020-029, "Caltrans Tests Wrong Way Driver Pavement Markings in San Diego" — https://dot.ca.gov/news-releases/news-release-2020-029
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CBS 8, "Four dead after rollover crash on SR-94" — https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/four-dead-after-rollover-crash-on-sr94/509-ece7f984-a2ca-4fd2-8eb5-d6a9ec52ab9a
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FOX 5 San Diego, "Two people dead following crash on SR-905 near Otay Mesa" — https://fox5sandiego.com/traffic/two-people-dead-after-vehicle-pursuit-on-sr-905-near-otay-mesa/
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City of San Diego Transportation Department, "High Crash Locations for Calendar Year 2025" (memorandum, March 24, 2026) — https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2026-04/2025-high-crash-locations.pdf
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City of San Diego (Inside San Diego), "City Advances Safety Improvements for High Crash Locations" — https://www.insidesandiego.org/city-advances-safety-improvements-high-crash-locations
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California Office of Traffic Safety, "San Diego County 2023" rankings — https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/san-diego-county-2023/
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KPBS, "Data show San Diego police stop fewer drivers while more people die in traffic" (Feb. 23, 2026) — https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2026/02/23/data-show-san-diego-police-stop-fewer-drivers-while-more-people-die-in-traffic
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City of San Diego, News Release: "City of San Diego Releases Comprehensive Speed Management Plan" (Feb. 19, 2026) — https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026-02-19-city-of-san-diego-releases-comprehensive-speed-management-plan.pdf