The most dangerous intersections in Cleveland, Akron, and Canton

Intersections don't cause crashes by themselves, but in Northeast Ohio a small number of them account for a lopsided share of the damage. Ohio recorded 264,954 crashes statewide in 2025, including 26,533 in December alone¹². Zoom into where those crashes happen, and state transportation officials say roughly 27% of all Ohio traffic deaths and 40% of serious injuries between 2019 and 2023 occurred at an intersection, most often on high-capacity arterials running through cities, towns, and villages³. In the Cleveland, Akron, and Canton market, several of those intersections have names, cross streets, and published crash counts attached to them.

Cleveland and Cuyahoga County

The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), the region's transportation planning body for Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Lorain, and Medina counties, ranked its ten most dangerous traffic corridors in its SAVE transportation safety plan. The list leans heavily on Cleveland's East Side and near-West Side arterials⁴:

• Mentor Avenue (U.S. 20) between Hopkins and Old Johnnycake Ridge roads: 229 crashes, 5 fatal or serious-injury
• St. Clair Avenue between East 93rd and East 115th streets: 168 crashes, 12 fatal or serious-injury
• West 117th Street between Lorain Avenue and Berea Road: 162 crashes, 5 fatal or serious-injury
• Dille and Nottingham roads between Euclid Avenue and South Waterloo Road: 160 crashes, 10 fatal or serious-injury
• Superior Avenue between East 108th Street and Hayden Avenue: 153 crashes, 5 fatal or serious-injury

Across the full five-county NOACA region, 2019 brought 50,300 crashes, 134 traffic deaths, and 1,337 serious-injury crashes, both totals up from the year before⁴. St. Clair Avenue's troubles aren't new: a separate analysis of state crash data found it was the deadliest local road anywhere in Northeast Ohio between 2017 and 2021, with 17 crashes producing 19 deaths along the stretch running from the Flats to the east end of Euclid Avenue⁵.

Cuyahoga County's fatal crash count has been climbing. The Ohio State Highway Patrol's own crash mapping shows 82 fatal crashes countywide in 2022, 100 in 2023, and 111 in 2024, all but one of them in urban areas, with roughly half tied to OVI (operating a vehicle impaired)⁶. Interstate 90 through Cuyahoga County logged 8,866 crashes between 2018 and 2022, tying it with a stretch of I-75 near Cincinnati as the most crash-prone highway corridor in the state⁷. That volume is why, on July 31, 2026, ODOT and the state patrol opened a new "safety corridor" on a 14-mile stretch of I-480 between the Lorain County line and State Route 176, after nearly 800 crashes and 9 deaths there over two years made it the county's second most dangerous highway behind I-90⁸. The same two-year enforcement push on I-90's lakefront stretch, backed by 974 speed citations and 524 seatbelt citations, cut fatal crashes there by 38%⁸.

The City of Cleveland adopted its Vision Zero Action Plan on September 2, 2022, after tallying an average of 414 traffic deaths and serious injuries a year between 2020 and 2025, meaning someone was killed or badly hurt in city traffic more than once a day⁹. As of June 27, 2026, the city had logged 23 traffic deaths for the year, already ahead of the 19 recorded by the same date in 2025⁹.

Akron and Summit County

The Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) covers Summit and Portage counties along with a slice of northeastern Wayne County, and its 2022-2024 crash report reviewed 46,576 crashes to flag 128 high-crash roadway sections and 217 high-crash intersections¹⁰. The single worst intersection in the whole coverage area was Rhodes Avenue and West Thornton Street in Akron's Sherbondy Hill neighborhood: 26 crashes with an injury rate near 60%. Riverview Road and Ira Road in Cuyahoga Falls also stood out, with a crash there resulting in a fatality¹⁰. Among roadway segments, North Main Street (State Route 261) between Olive Street and East Tallmadge Avenue on Akron's North Hill ranked third worst, and two segments of Copley Road (State Route 162) in West Akron placed eighth and tenth¹⁰.

The area's overall crash count actually fell to 14,968 in 2024, its lowest since 2020. But serious-injury crashes moved the other direction, rising nearly 19%, from 333 to 405, over that same three-year span¹⁰.

Canton and Stark County

The Stark County Area Transportation Study's most recent crash report crowns a new leader almost every cycle. Its latest ranking, covering 2022 through 2024, puts these three at the top¹¹:

1. State Route 173 (State Street NE) and Paris Avenue NE, Marlboro Township: 22 crashes, mostly failure-to-yield; a roundabout is planned but isn't funded to open until 2028 or 2029
2. Walnut Avenue and 15th Street NE, Canton: poor stop-sign visibility flagged as the main problem, with a flashing beacon and tree trimming recommended
3. Dressler Road and Everhard Road: 20 crashes in 2024 alone at this six-lane signalized intersection, where lane-widening work has since been completed

Two cycles earlier, the county's most dangerous spot was Twelfth Street NW and Market Avenue N in Canton, which saw 25 crashes in 2020, including a collision that killed a 27-year-old motorcyclist. That intersection's crash count fell to 22 in 2021 and then to 9 in 2022, dropping it out of the top rankings¹².

Why these corners keep producing crashes

ODOT's 2025 Strategic Highway Safety Plan breaks down what actually happens at Ohio's worst intersections. Angle and left-turn crashes, where a driver fails to yield to traffic from another direction, are the single most common pattern, followed by fixed-object and rear-end collisions³. Signalized intersections account for 42% of intersection fatalities and serious injuries statewide, stop-sign intersections another 32%, and roundabouts just 1%³. Drivers under 30 are more likely to be involved in an intersection crash than any other age group, and men are twice as likely as women to be in one³.

If you're hurt at one of these intersections

A crash report from one of these locations doesn't decide fault by itself, but the documented history helps. Photos of the intersection, the police report's crash code, and any prior safety-improvement records like the ones cited above can all matter later. If you're dealing with injuries, insurance calls, or a fault dispute after a wreck at one of these spots, an attorney from our legal directory can walk through what your local crash report and these agency records mean for your case.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com. "Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report, 2025." https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/2025-annual-report

2. thatcarhitme.com. "Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report, December 2025." https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/december-2025-report

3. Ohio Department of Transportation. "Ohio Strategic Highway Safety Plan" (2025), pp. 5, 20. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/transportation.ohio.gov/safety/highway-safety/OhioStrategicHighwaySafetyPlan.pdf

4. News 5 Cleveland. "Agency identifies Northeast Ohio's 10 most dangerous traffic corridors but finds driver actions cause most crashes," citing NOACA's SAVE Plan (2019). https://www.news5cleveland.com/traffic/traffic-news/agency-identifies-northeast-ohios-10-most-dangerous-traffic-corridors-but-finds-driver-actions-cause-most-crashes

5. Fox8 Cleveland (WJW). "The deadliest local roads in Northeast Ohio," citing state crash data 2017-2021. https://fox8.com/news/the-deadliest-local-roads-in-northeast-ohio/

6. Ohio State Highway Patrol, Statistical Analysis Unit. "Cuyahoga County Fatal Traffic Crashes, 2022 to 2024" (SAU Fatal Crash Database, published April 7, 2025). https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/statepatrol.ohio.gov/statistics/statdocs/Fatals_24/Cuyahoga_Fatals_24.pdf

7. Fox8 Cleveland (WJW). "The 10 most dangerous highways in Ohio," citing Ohio State Highway Patrol data, 2018-2022. https://fox8.com/news/the-10-most-dangerous-highways-in-ohio/

8. Cleveland 19 News (WOIO). "New I-480 safety corridor brings increased patrols, zero-tolerance enforcement" (July 31, 2026). https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/07/31/new-i-480-safety-corridor-brings-increased-patrols-zero-tolerance-enforcement/

9. City of Cleveland. "Vision Zero." https://www.clevelandohio.gov/transportation-mobility/vision-zero

10. Signal Akron, citing the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) 2022-2024 Crash Report. https://signalakron.org/most-unsafe-roadways-and-intersections-in-akron-amats/

11. News 5 Cleveland. "Stark County's most dangerous intersections ranked," citing the Stark County Area Transportation Study. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/stark-countys-most-dangerous-intersections-ranked

12. Yahoo News. "Stark County has a new No. 1 most dangerous intersection. See where it is," citing the Stark County Area Transportation Study's 2022 crash report. https://news.yahoo.com/stark-county-no-1-most-095111295.html