The most dangerous intersections in Cincinnati

Hamilton County logged 28,915 traffic crashes in 2025, about 79 a day, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol's most recent county fast-facts sheet.¹ Statewide, Ohio recorded 264,954 crashes that year, meaning Hamilton County alone accounted for more than one in ten of them.² Fifty-three of the county's crashes killed someone, down from 60 in 2024 and 72 in 2023, real progress but still close to one fatal crash a week.¹ The damage isn't spread evenly. It clusters on a handful of corridors and intersections that show up again and again in state and local crash data: Colerain Avenue on the west side, the interstate loop of I-75, I-71 and I-275, and a set of downtown and Northside streets where pedestrians take the worst of it.

Colerain Avenue's decade-long problem

If one road defines dangerous driving in Greater Cincinnati, it's Colerain Avenue. The Ohio Department of Transportation's own ranking of the state's most crash-prone intersections has repeatedly flagged multiple points along the corridor, including Colerain at Virginia Avenue, North Bend Road and West Galbraith Road.³ Three more points turn up on ODOT's broader list: Redskin Drive, Round Top Road, and Harry Lee Lane, where Colerain Township police officer Dale Woods was struck and killed on January 7, 2019, while directing traffic around an earlier crash.⁴ A few miles closer to downtown, ODOT rated Reading Road at Elsinore Avenue the single worst intersection in the region, averaging 55 crashes a year.⁴

The stretch of Colerain Avenue near Banning Road has been especially deadly for people on foot. ODOT figures show 39 pedestrian and bicycle crashes there over five years, five of them fatal, on a road carrying roughly 90,000 vehicles a day.⁵ Shannon Rogers, 33, was killed crossing Colerain Avenue near Jonrose, just north of Banning Road, on November 22, 2023.⁶ A rapid-flashing crosswalk beacon installed there in 2021 hasn't stopped the crashes.⁵ Colerain Township assistant administrator Jeff McElravy says drivers routinely travel well past the posted 35 mph limit, and township and ODOT officials have since added lighting between Kipling and Galbraith avenues, mounted monitoring cameras, and stepped up patrols.⁷⁵ "There has been an accident on Colerain Avenue almost every day this year," McElravy told reporters in March 2024.⁵

The interstates carry the most raw volume

By sheer crash count, no local road beats the interstates. I-75 logged 2,120 crashes in Hamilton County in 2025, I-71 had 1,473, and I-275 had 1,182, the same three routes that topped the county's crash list in 2023 and 2024 too.¹ The highway patrol's own incident log for early 2026 shows how routine this is: a driver going 70 mph in wet conditions rear-ended stopped traffic on I-275 near mile post 33 on February 19, setting off a three-vehicle chain reaction.¹

Interchange redesigns show the volume isn't fixed in place. ODOT converted the SR-32/I-275 interchange near Eastgate in Clermont County to a green T configuration in 2023 and 2024, separating the merge that used to force Eastgate Boulevard traffic to blend with SR-32 while also watching for vehicles exiting I-275. Crashes there fell from an average of 29 a year, with one fatality and four serious injuries between 2015 and 2018, to about 10 a year with none fatal, a 65% drop.⁸

Downtown, Over-the-Rhine, and the pedestrian gap

Raw interstate volume tells only part of the story. A decade of city crash data reviewed by WCPO found Westwood led all Cincinnati neighborhoods with 297 pedestrian crashes between 2013 and 2022, followed by Downtown with 289 and Over-the-Rhine with 207.⁹ In Northside, the six-way convergence of Hamilton, Ludlow, Spring Grove and Old Ludlow avenues with Hoffner Street, known locally as Knowlton's Corner, has been a recognized hot spot since at least September 2016, when business owner Sarah Cole was struck and killed crossing Hamilton Avenue. The city studied a roundabout there but rejected it in 2018 in favor of signal retiming and curb bump-outs to shorten the crossings.¹⁰

Regional numbers back up what those neighborhood totals suggest. OKI, the region's federally designated planning agency, reviewed a decade of crash records across its eight-county area and found 6,117 pedestrian crashes and 1,727 bicycle crashes between 2015 and 2024, resulting in 259 and 29 deaths.¹¹ Pedestrians and cyclists made up less than 2% of all crashes but around 12% of fatal and serious-injury ones, and arterial roads like Colerain and Reading carry roughly 10% of regional road miles yet account for about half of severe pedestrian and cyclist crashes.¹¹ Speed decides survival: OKI put the odds of death or serious injury to a struck pedestrian at about 1 in 5 at 25 mph, rising to roughly 50% at 35 mph, the same limit posted on much of Colerain Avenue.¹¹ Most of these crashes happen between 3 and 8 p.m., when traffic is heavy and dusk cuts visibility.¹¹

What's changing

Cincinnati's Department of Transportation and Engineering runs Vision Zero, a citywide effort to redesign streets and calm traffic at known high-risk locations.¹² A federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant is now funding a Transportation Safety Action Plan, built through 2024 and 2025 on crash data and public input, meant to guide which corridors get raised crosswalks, protected bike lanes and narrower travel lanes next.¹³

Money is moving at the state level too. Ohio announced $97.2 million in Highway Safety Improvement Program funding across 39 projects in 27 counties for fiscal years 2026 through 2031, part of what officials describe as four straight years of falling traffic deaths and serious injuries statewide.¹⁴ Locally, that includes right-of-way purchases for the Ohio River Trail Oasis Corridor in Hamilton County, a $1.26 million sidewalk and crossing project on Colerain Avenue at Springdale Road, a $3.26 million roundabout in Lebanon, and $2.38 million to widen Bethany Road in Butler County with a shared-use path.¹⁴¹⁵

If you're hurt at one of these intersections

Ohio's 2025 numbers show Hamilton County drivers cited for failure to yield 3,745 times and for speeding 1,884 times, the two factors behind most of the crashes on this list.¹ If you're hit at Colerain and Galbraith, on the Reading Road corridor, or anywhere else named here, get medical care first and get a copy of the police report before an insurance adjuster calls. An attorney from the legal directory can help sort out fault and medical bills while the road's own safety record backs up your case.

This article is for general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Ohio State Highway Patrol, Ohio Traffic Safety Office, "2025 Hamilton County Traffic Crashes Fast Facts" and "Hamilton County's Roadway Report" (April 2026): https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Hamilton.pdf

2. That Car Hit Me, "Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report, 2025 Annual Report": https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/2025-annual-report

3. WCPO, "Three Colerain Avenue intersections rated among state's most dangerous": https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/three-colerain-avenue-intersections-rated-among-states-most-dangerous

4. WCPO, "ODOT: 33 of Ohio's most dangerous intersections are in Greater Cincinnati": https://www.wcpo.com/news/transportation-development/thirty-three-of-ohios-most-dangerous-intersections-are-in-greater-cincinnati

5. Local 12 (WKRC), "ODOT and township leaders tackle safety improvements on Cincinnati road known for crashes" (March 4, 2024): https://local12.com/news/local/ohio-department-transportation-police-safety-improvements-colerain-avenue-major-busy-road-street-pedestrian-accident-crashes-banning-galbraith-fatal-collisions-crosswalk-flashing-beacons-lights-signs-speed-enforcement-cincinnati-ohio

6. Local 12 (WKRC), "Residents call for safer crosswalk after pedestrian struck, killed in car collision" (November 22, 2023): https://local12.com/news/local/crosswalk-safety-road-traffic-colerain-avenue-township-shannon-rogers-hotel-jonrose-banning-road-car-crash-collision-fatal-struck-police-investigation-odot-sidewalk-cincinnati-ohio

7. WVXU, "'Nobody should die crossing the street': Officials remind everyone to stay alert on Colerain Ave." (February 29, 2024): https://www.wvxu.org/local-news/2024-02-29/odot-colerain-avenue-designated-crosswalks-drivers-slow-down

8. Spectrum News 1, "ODOT: Intersection conversion results in 65% fewer crashes" (July 6, 2026): https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/cincinnati/news/2026/07/06/odot-intersection-conversion-success

9. WCPO, "Which Cincinnati neighborhoods are the most dangerous for pedestrians?": https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/which-cincinnati-neighborhoods-are-the-most-dangerous-for-pedestrians

10. WCPO, "Northside roundabout plan hits a roadblock": https://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/roundabout-at-knowltons-corner-not-the-answer-for-busy-intersection-city-says

11. OKI Regional Council of Governments, "OKI Vulnerable Road User Crash Analysis 2015-2024" (July 16, 2026): https://www.oki.org/oki-crash-study-pedestrians-cyclists-at-highest-risk-speed-and-road-design-lead-to-severe-consequences/

12. City of Cincinnati, "Vision Zero: About the Program": https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/visionzero/about-the-program/

13. City of Cincinnati Department of Transportation & Engineering, "Safe Streets for All Cincinnati": https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/dote/dote-projects/safe-streets-for-all-cincinnati/

14. Local 12 (WKRC), "Ohio invests $97.2 million in road safety; here are Cincinnati-area projects" (January 18, 2026): https://local12.com/newsletter-daily/ohio-invests-97-million-dollars-road-safety-cincinnati-projects-transportation-roadway-pamela-boratyn-traffic-fatalities-trail-oasis-corridor-clermont-county

15. Local 12 (WKRC), "Three local projects get millions in state funding to improve road safety; here's where": https://local12.com/news/local/butler-hamilton-warren-county-road-safety-projects-dewine-odot-2026-lebanon-colerain-bethany-road-roundabout-cincinnati