Austin's most dangerous intersections, and what the crash data says about them

Austin's crash data doesn't need dressing up to make the case. In 2025 the city logged 11,937 reported crashes, 97 of them fatal, and 99 deaths, according to Austin's own crash reporting drawn from Austin Police Department and TxDOT records¹. Motorcyclists, cyclists, and people on foot absorbed a share of that toll that's out of proportion to how many of them are actually on the road: 300 motorcycle crashes, 278 pedestrian crashes that killed 30 people, and 240 bicycle crashes that killed 5¹. The pace hasn't let up much in 2026: May alone brought 902 crashes and 7 more deaths².

The city's own numbers land close to that. Austin Transportation and Public Works counted 99 deaths and 301 serious injuries in 2025, a rate of 37.9 people killed or seriously hurt per 100,000 residents, down from 49.3 in 2024 and 64.7 at the 2022 peak³. One line in that report explains a lot about where the worst intersections sit: an estimated 65% to 75% of Austin's traffic deaths happen on roads the city doesn't control, because they belong to the state³. That's the pattern below. Austin's most dangerous crossings tend to be the ones where a state highway or a farm-to-market road runs straight into a city street.

The intersections that keep showing up

Two locations dominate Austin's own injury-crash tracking.

East Howard Lane at Harris Glenn Drive, in North Austin, has produced more injury crashes than any other non-highway intersection in the city over a four-year stretch: 57 injuries, two of them severe⁴. Widen the lens to the city's 10 worst local intersections and the total climbs to roughly 300 injuries over that same four years, with driver inattention behind about 21% of the crashes and drivers turning left without yielding the right of way behind about 17%⁴.

East Riverside Drive at South Pleasant Valley Road carries a worse distinction: it's the one intersection on that list where someone died. On April 15, 2025, Krishna Ghimire was riding a motorcycle through the intersection when he collided with a pickup truck. He died eight days later. Austin police logged it as the city's 25th fatal crash of 2025, case number 25-1051605, in a year that already had 29 traffic deaths on the books⁵.

Dessau Road at Shropshire Boulevard, on the northeast side of town, saw its own fatal crash on April 1, 2026: a pedestrian was struck and died four days later, and APD's Vehicular Homicide unit opened case 26-0911117, marking the city's 21st fatal crash of the year⁶.

Just past the city line, in southeast Travis County, Travis County Fire Rescue has been raising a flag about FM 812 at US 183. One firefighter told KVUE he personally answered three crashes at that single spot over a three-week stretch in mid-2026. The pattern county crews describe is specific: drivers turn left off FM 812 across westbound US 183 traffic running 50 to 60 mph, and don't clear it in time⁷. Fire officials say they're bringing their own crash logs to TxDOT to push for a redesign.

Why these crossings are so dangerous

The recurring theme across Austin's worst intersections isn't a mystery. Left turns across fast, undivided traffic show up again and again, whether it's FM 812 crossing US 183 in Travis County or a driver misjudging the gap at Riverside and Pleasant Valley. Add a state highway carrying suburban commuter speeds through what's still technically city geography, and the mismatch between design speed and actual crossing traffic does the rest³⁷.

Crash figures for the city come from the Texas Department of Transportation's Crash Records Information System, which compiles every report filed by a Texas peace officer, including Austin PD, and feeds the same open dataset the city publishes as its Vision Zero Crash Report Data⁸⁹.

What the city has tried

Austin adopted Vision Zero, a policy commitment to eliminate traffic deaths, on October 1, 2015¹⁰. Since then, voters and the city have put real money behind it: $15 million in the 2016 mobility bond, another $15 million in 2018, $65 million in 2020, and a combined $33.7 million in federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grants in 2023 and 2024¹⁰. The first $6 million, back in 2016, went specifically to fixing the city's five highest-crash intersections at the time¹⁰.

The results are mixed but real. The city has completed 29 major intersection safety projects and 28 speed-management projects since 2016. Protected intersection redesigns are linked to a 42% drop in fatal and serious injury crashes, protected left-turn signals to a 51% drop¹⁰. On Bluff Springs Road, a safety project cut crashes by 30% and cut speeding by 58%. A Barton Springs Road pilot cut the number of drivers going faster than 40 mph by 65% over six months¹⁰.

2025 brought the fewest serious injuries since Vision Zero started, and pedestrian deaths fell 23% year over year, but total fatalities ticked up slightly, from 97 in 2024 to 99 in 2025³¹¹. As of mid-July 2026, the city had recorded 44 fatal crashes for the year, a pace tracking below both 2024 and 2025⁴.

If you're hurt at one of these intersections

A police report from any of these crashes lists the exact intersection, the contributing factors the responding officer coded (failure to yield, following too closely, distracted driving), and whether the road belongs to the city or to TxDOT, which matters for who's liable if a design or signal-timing defect contributed. Get a copy of that report before you talk to an insurance adjuster. Hold onto anything else tied to the scene, too: dashcam footage, photos of skid marks or the signal, and contact information for anyone who saw it happen.

If a driver's left turn, a blown light, or a state highway's crossing design caused your crash, an attorney who works these Austin intersections regularly will know which agency's records to request first and how fast those records get overwritten. You can find one through our legal directory.

This article provides general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. ThatCarHitMe.com, "Austin, TX Crash Report — 2025," https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/texas/austin/2025-annual-report

2. ThatCarHitMe.com, "Austin, TX Crash Report — May 2026," https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/texas/austin/may-2026-report

3. City of Austin Transportation and Public Works, "Severe crashes show downward trend in 2025," https://www.austintexas.gov/transportation-public-works/mobility-matters/severe-crashes-show-downward-trend-2025

4. Vision Zero ATX, https://www.visionzeroatx.org/

5. City of Austin, "Traffic Fatality in the Intersection of East Riverside Drive and South Pleasant Valley Road," https://www.austintexas.gov/news/traffic-fatality-intersection-east-riverside-drive-and-south-pleasant-valley-road

6. City of Austin, "Traffic Fatality in the Intersection of Dessau Road and Shropshire Boulevard," https://www.austintexas.gov/police/news/traffic-fatality-intersection-dessau-road-and-shropshire-boulevard

7. KVUE, "Travis County Fire Rescue warns of spike in serious crashes at FM 812 and US 183," https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/travis-county-fire-rescue-crashes-fm-812-us-183/269-e1497143-0c84-436d-ac87-904d4797d208

8. Texas Department of Transportation, "Crash Data Analysis and Statistics," https://www.txdot.gov/data-maps/crash-reports-records/crash-data-analysis-statistics.html

9. City of Austin Open Data Portal, "Vision Zero Crash Report Data," https://data.austintexas.gov/Transportation-and-Mobility/Vision-Zero-Crash-Report-Data/y2wy-tgr5/data

10. City of Austin, "Vision Zero 10-Year Report," October 2025, https://publicinput.com/visionzero10

11. Austin Monitor, "A decade of Vision Zero shows progress on crashes and injuries, not on deaths," October 2025, https://austinmonitor.com/stories/2025/10/a-decade-of-vision-zero-shows-progress-on-crashes-and-injuries-not-on-deaths/