The deadliest highways and corridors in the San Francisco Bay Area

From San Francisco's High Injury Network to International Boulevard in Oakland and San Jose's seventeen Priority Safety Corridors, local data shows exactly where Bay Area crashes cluster, and how much safer some of these roads have gotten.

ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial
Jun 27, 2026
6 min read

The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose media market covers three cities with three very different kinds of dangerous roads. San Francisco's crashes cluster on wide, one-way arterials built for downtown throughput. Oakland's cluster on industrial boulevards cutting through East Bay neighborhoods. San Jose's cluster on the suburban expressways and wide arterials connecting its sprawling grid. And the mountain pass and freeways stitching the three together add crash patterns of their own.

Across the nine-county Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Vital Signs program counted 472 traffic deaths in 2020, the most recent year in its published regional series, and found that roughly a third of those killed were pedestrians or cyclists rather than vehicle occupants.1 That imbalance shows up sharply once you zoom into the three anchor cities.

San Francisco's arterials, built like highways

San Francisco cut its 2025 traffic deaths to 25, down from 43 in 2024, a 42 percent drop and the city's lowest count since 2018.2 Pedestrian deaths fell 33 percent over the same period, and the city credits its expanded network of automated speed cameras, which cut speeding by 78 percent at monitored locations.2

Even with that improvement, the city's own numbers show where risk still concentrates. Thirteen percent of San Francisco's streets account for 74 percent of severe and fatal crashes, a share the city calls its High Injury Network.3 The network's 2026 update flagged new high-risk segments on Fulton Street between Fourth and Seventh avenues, the Embarcadero between Howard Street and Pier 40, and Point Lobos Avenue between 46th Avenue and the Great Highway, a downhill stretch where an unprotected bike lane merges into car traffic.3 The same update credited safety redesigns with cutting injury crashes 69 percent on Seventh Street between Harrison and Townsend, and 64 percent on California Street between 18th Avenue and Arguello Boulevard.3

Some of that risk is current, not historical. On April 13, 2026, a pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver at Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue in SOMA, the eighth pedestrian death of the year in a city that had recorded nine traffic deaths total.4 It was the second traffic death that year on Mission Street alone, and the second on South Van Ness Avenue. Both streets run roughly 125 feet wide with seven travel lanes, and the intersection sits on the High Injury Network.4 Walk San Francisco, the pedestrian advocacy group that tracks these deaths, points to the physics behind the pattern: a pedestrian struck at 25 mph or under has less than a 25 percent chance of severe injury or death, but at 40 mph that figure jumps to roughly 75 percent.4

The California Office of Traffic Safety's 2023 county rankings back this up. San Francisco County ranked first among the state's 58 counties for pedestrian collision victims and first for pedestrians 65 and older struck in traffic, with 664 and 126 victims respectively that year.5

Oakland's turnaround on International Boulevard, and where the risk moved

Oakland's High Injury Network covers a smaller share of the street grid, just 6 percent of street miles, but still accounts for 63 percent of the city's severe and fatal crashes.6 International Boulevard, MacArthur Boulevard, San Pablo Avenue, Foothill Boulevard, and Bancroft Avenue anchor that network. The 2024 update added nearly 50 blocks of MacArthur Boulevard, from Fruitvale Avenue to 73rd Avenue, along with new segments of San Leandro Street.6

International Boulevard is the clearer local success story. Traffic deaths on the corridor fell from 10 in 2023 to 2 in 2025, and pedestrian deaths on it dropped from 7 to zero over the same span.7 AC Transit and Oakland's transportation department installed plastic bollards starting in summer 2024 to keep cars out of the dedicated bus rapid transit lane, and intrusions into that lane have dropped 83 percent since.7

That still leaves some of the worst intersections in the East Bay along the same corridor. City data covering 2017 through 2023 shows International Boulevard at 73rd Avenue recorded 89 injuries, the highest tally of any intersection the city analyzed, and Hamilton Street at Hegenberger Road recorded 58 injuries and 3 fatalities.8 International Boulevard at 80th Avenue recorded 38 injuries and 2 fatalities, and Bancroft Avenue at 73rd Avenue recorded 56 injuries.8

Oakland's freeways carry their own risk. A pre-dawn crash on southbound I-880 near Davis Street in San Leandro killed two men in March 2026, in a stretch CHP has flagged for low visibility and a mix of commercial trucks and commuter traffic near the industrial waterfront.9

San Jose's seventeen corridors carry more than half the deaths

San Jose's Vision Zero task force has named 17 Priority Safety Corridors: Capitol Expressway, Story Road, Senter Road, King Road, McKee Road, Santa Clara Street and Alum Rock Avenue, Jackson Avenue, McLaughlin Avenue, First Street and Monterey Road, Blossom Hill Road, Branham Lane, Almaden Expressway, Saratoga Avenue, Fruitdale Avenue, Hillsdale Avenue, and White Road. Using a 2018 baseline the city still cites when describing the list, those corridors carried 55 percent of San Jose's traffic fatalities and 38 percent of its severe injuries despite covering a fraction of the city's total street mileage.10 Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, ranked 8th among the state's 58 counties for bicycle collision victims in 2023, with 540 cyclists killed or injured.11

The city's overall numbers are trending down. San Jose recorded 41 traffic deaths in 2025, its lowest count since 2012 and down from 49 in 2024 and a peak of 63 in 2022, with 20 of the 2025 deaths being pedestrians.12 Colin Heyne of the San Jose Department of Transportation credited a mix of education campaigns and lowered speed limits on 18 city roadways. Jordan Moldow, who chairs the city's Vision Zero community advisory committee, put it plainly: every one of those deaths is a resident, a family member, a person someone loved.12

Highway 17, the mountain pass out of the valley

The road that carries San Jose traffic over the Santa Cruz Mountains has carried the nickname Blood Alley since before center dividers went in, and it's had a standing safety task force for more than two decades. The Safe on 17 Task Force, run by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission since 1999, logged 839 total collisions on the corridor in its most recent published annual report, including 4 fatal and 275 injury collisions.13 The commission's current project is a wildlife crossing tunnel near Laurel Curve, completed in 2022 and 2023, meant to cut down on the animal-strike crashes that add to the corridor's collision count.14 The risk hasn't gone away: on August 23, 2025, a driver was killed when their car left the roadway and caught fire on southbound Highway 17 north of Vine Hill Road.15

After a crash on one of these roads

Every corridor here shows the same pattern. A small share of streets and highway miles absorbs a disproportionate share of the deaths and severe injuries, and the agencies that track them, SFMTA, Oakland's transportation department, San Jose's Department of Transportation, Caltrans, and the CHP, publish that data specifically so they can target it. If you've been hurt in a crash on one of these roads, the police report and the relevant agency's crash history for that exact intersection or segment can both matter. An attorney familiar with the local corridor and its safety record can help you sort out what happened; you can find one through the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

  1. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Vital Signs, "Fatalities from Crashes" - https://vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/indicators/fatalities-from-crashes

  2. SFMTA, "Press Release: San Francisco Traffic Fatalities Drop by Nearly Half in 2025" - https://www.sfmta.com/press-releases/press-release-san-francisco-traffic-fatalities-drop-nearly-half-2025

  3. The San Francisco Standard, "SF's new high-injury map shows where streets are getting more dangerous," March 26, 2026 - https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/26/sf-high-injury-network-map-2024-dangerous-streets-update/

  4. Walk San Francisco, "Media Advisory: Pedestrian killed by hit & run driver in SOMA marks eighth pedestrian death this year," April 2026 - https://walksf.org/news/for-reporters/press-releases/pedestrian-fatality-mission-south-van-ness-2026/

  5. California Office of Traffic Safety, San Francisco County 2023 Rankings - https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/san-francisco-county-2023/

  6. Oakland Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, "High Injury Network Update," May 19, 2024 - https://oaklandbpac.org/2024/05/19/hin2024/

  7. The Oaklandside, "International Boulevard's makeover ended pedestrian deaths this year," December 22, 2025 - https://oaklandside.org/2025/12/22/international-boulevard-bus-lane-pedestrian-deaths-safety/

  8. The Oaklandside, "Where are Oakland's 20 most dangerous intersections?" June 18, 2024 - https://oaklandside.org/2024/06/18/where-are-oaklands-20-most-dangerous-intersections/

  9. Hoodline, "Pre-Dawn I-880 Crash In San Leandro Leaves 2 Dead, 1 Injured," March 2026 - https://hoodline.com/2026/03/pre-dawn-i-880-crash-in-san-leandro-leaves-2-dead-1-injured/

  10. San Jose Spotlight, "Here's how San Jose plans to prevent traffic fatalities" - https://sanjosespotlight.com/heres-how-san-jose-plans-to-prevent-traffic-fatalities-deaths-hit-run-speeding-vision-zero/

  11. California Office of Traffic Safety, Santa Clara County 2023 Rankings - https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/santa-clara-county-2023/

  12. San Jose Spotlight, "San Jose traffic deaths dropped in 2025" - https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-traffic-deaths-dropped-in-2025/

  13. Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, "Safe on 17, 2019 Annual Report" - https://sccrtc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019-Safe-on-17-Annual-Report.pdf

  14. Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, Highway 17 project page - https://www.sccrtc.org/projects/streets-highways/highway-17/

  15. ABC7 News, "Person killed in fiery car crash on SB SR-17 in Santa Cruz Mountains, CHP says," August 23, 2025 - https://abc7news.com/post/person-killed-fiery-car-crash-sb-sr-17-santa-cruz-mountains-chp-says/17618859/

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Written by: ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial

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