The most dangerous intersections in Columbus, Ohio

Franklin County logged 23,878 traffic crashes in 2025, a slight dip from 24,005 the year before, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol's crash dashboard.¹ Statewide, serious-injury and fatal crashes fell too, from 7,211 in 2024 to 6,768 in 2025, even as total crash volume rose to 255,122.¹ Fatalities have fallen for four straight years, from a 2021 peak of 1,356 to 1,157 in 2024, and were down further to 976 through mid-November 2025 compared with 1,029 at the same point the year before.² The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, the region's transportation planning agency, puts the human cost in plainer terms: roughly 100 people die and another 800 suffer serious, life-altering injuries on Central Ohio roads every year.³

Those crashes don't spread evenly across the map. They cluster at specific intersections, on specific corridors, year after year. The state and city have both published the data, and it points to the same handful of streets again and again: Morse Road, Cleveland Avenue, Broad Street, Hilliard-Rome Road.

Where the crashes cluster

The most complete intersection-by-intersection ranking Columbus has published is built on Ohio Department of Public Safety crash records from 2013 through 2015.⁴ Cleveland Avenue and Morse Road, on the Northeast Side, topped that list with 133 crashes, 55 injuries and two deaths, nearly double the intersection ranked second.

The rest of the top ten, per the same ODPS data:

• Hilliard-Rome Road and Renner Road: 76 crashes, 21 injuries
• Karl Road and Morse Road: 68 crashes, 43 injuries
• Morse Road and Westerville Road: 66 crashes, 21 injuries
• Georgesville Road and Sullivant Avenue: 58 crashes, 37 injuries
• Hard Road and Sawmill Road: 56 crashes, 33 injuries
• Hilliard-Rome Road and Roberts Road: 56 crashes, 20 injuries
• Bethel Road and Olentangy River Road: 55 crashes, 26 injuries
• Lyra Drive and Polaris Parkway: 51 crashes, 23 injuries
• Gender Road and Refugee Road: 49 crashes, 29 injuries

No fresher citywide ranking has been published since, but the same corridors keep showing up. Morse Road accounts for three of the ten intersections above, and Hilliard-Rome Road accounts for two. More recent crash mapping from the city's Vision Zero program flags the same names as part of its High Injury Network, the roughly 7 percent of Columbus streets where a disproportionate share of severe crashes now occur: Broad Street, High Street, Morse Road, Cleveland Avenue at Broad, Sullivant Avenue and Livingston Avenue among them.⁵

Pedestrians carry the worst of it

Franklin County recorded more pedestrian crashes than any other county in Ohio from 2018 through the most recent reporting period, 2,749 of them, ahead of Cuyahoga County's 2,282 and Hamilton County's 2,177.⁶ Statewide, 14,119 pedestrian crashes have been logged since 2018, and 851 turned fatal, killing 853 people.⁶

The trend has bent downward since a 2021 peak of 176 pedestrian deaths statewide: 165 in 2022, 150 in 2023, and 86 through September 2024, a 17 percent drop.⁶ Most of those deaths happen in the dark. Of the 150 pedestrian deaths in 2023, 103 occurred after sunset, and the average victim was 47 years old.⁶ In Columbus specifically, pedestrians make up just 3.5 percent of road users but 28 percent of traffic deaths, a gap city planners cite as their central argument for slower streets.⁵

Slower streets, fewer serious crashes

Columbus lowered speed limits on eleven downtown streets from 35 mph to 25 mph in March 2023, using its authority to set limits in a designated business district without ODOT sign-off.⁷ The results, comparing the twelve months before the change to the twelve months after: total crashes fell from 479 to 407, and crashes involving a death or serious injury fell from 19 to 9, roughly cut in half.⁷

"If we reduce speed, even the option in our design of roadways for people to be speeding and then reduce the behavior of speeding, we reduce the possibility of crashes and we increase the survivability of crashes," said Katherine Swidarski of the Columbus Department of Public Service.⁷

That downtown pilot sits inside the city's broader Vision Zero Action Plan, launched in March 2020 with a target of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2035.⁵ Columbus counted 48 fatal crashes in 2025, down from a peak of 73 in 2021.⁵ The city's own data shows the danger concentrating rather than spreading out: in 2020, 65 percent of fatal and serious-injury crashes happened on 10 percent of city streets; by 2025, 52 percent of those crashes were happening on just 7 percent of streets.⁵

What's changing at the worst spots

A few projects now underway target the corridors above directly.

• The Franklin County Engineer's Office, working with ODOT, is building two multi-lane roundabouts on Frank Road at its intersections with Hardy Parkway Street and Brown Road, with construction tentatively set to start in spring 2026 and run about eight months.⁸
• ODOT's Highway Safety Improvement Program announced $72 million in July 2026 for 33 new projects across 23 Ohio counties, 13 of them intersection upgrades and 20 addressing pedestrian and roadway-departure crashes, funded through what the agency calls the largest per-capita safety program in the country.⁹
• On the Far East Side, ODOT opened a new flyover ramp connecting I-270 south to I-70 east as part of a $76 million interchange rebuild at I-70, I-270 and Brice Road, with a follow-on $89 million phase now reconstructing the Brice Road bridge and the westbound approach.¹⁰

"Every investment in our transportation network is an investment in people's safety," said ODOT Director Pamela Boratyn of the statewide safety push.⁹ Gov. Mike DeWine framed it more bluntly: "Every life lost on our roadways is one too many."⁹

If you're in a crash at one of these intersections

Ohio's crash data makes one thing clear: the risk at these intersections is not evenly distributed, and it is not new. If you're hurt in a crash at Cleveland Avenue and Morse Road, on Broad Street, or anywhere else on Franklin County's high-injury list, get medical care first and get a copy of the police crash report once it's filed. An attorney familiar with Ohio's comparative negligence rules can help sort out fault at an intersection, particularly one with a documented crash history. You can find one through the legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Spectrum News 1, "Ohio State Highway Patrol releases end-of-year crash statistics," Dec. 15, 2025. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2025/12/15/ohio-state-highway-patrol-end-of-year-crash-statistics

2. Spectrum News 1, "Ohio officials push for fewer traffic deaths in 2025," Nov. 13, 2025. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2025/11/13/ohio-fewer-traffic-deaths-2025

3. Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, "Transportation Safety." https://www.morpc.org/programs-services/transportation-safety/

4. Patch, "Top 10 Most Dangerous Intersections in Columbus, Ohio for Car Accidents," citing Ohio Department of Public Safety crash data, 2013-2015. https://patch.com/ohio/columbus/directory/listing/16731/top-10-most-dangerous-intersections-in-columbus-ohio-for-car-accidents

5. WOSU Public Media, "Is enough being done to prevent serious traffic crashes in central Ohio?" May 28, 2026. https://www.wosu.org/show/all-sides/2026-05-28/is-enough-being-done-to-prevent-serious-traffic-crashes-in-central-ohio

6. Spectrum News 1, "Pedestrian safety highlighted in October," Oct. 22, 2024. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2024/10/22/pedestrian-safety-highlighted-in-october

7. WOSU Public Media, "There have been less fatal crashes in downtown Columbus after speed limit was lowered to 25 mph," June 4, 2024. https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2024-06-04/there-have-been-less-fatal-crashes-in-downtown-columbus-after-speed-limit-is-lowered-to-25-mph

8. Franklin County Engineer's Office, Frank Road Roundabouts project documentation. https://www.franklincountyengineer.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Frank-Rd-Roundabouts_Draft-Comment-Response-Letter_6.20.2024_Final.pdf

9. Spectrum News 1, "Ohio to upgrade road safety with 33 new projects," July 23, 2026. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2026/07/23/ohio-road-upgrades

10. 10TV, "ODOT opens new I-270 to I-70 flyover ramp in east Columbus." https://www.10tv.com/article/news/local/i-270-to-i-70-flyover-ramp-open-east-columbus/530-7e38f8b4-b055-46ec-a285-71cc276ea488