Denver's most dangerous intersections and roads

Denver just closed out its worst year for traffic deaths on record, and the risk isn't spread evenly across the city. It concentrates on a short list of wide, high-speed arterials, at intersections that keep reappearing in crash reports year after year.

By the city's own count, 94 people died in Denver traffic crashes in 2025. As of early August 2026, the toll for the new year already stood at 36.¹ A preliminary tally reported in late December had put the 2025 total at 90, split among 34 pedestrians, 13 motorcyclists, 9 scooter riders, 5 cyclists and 28 people in vehicles; the count climbed as final reports came in.² Colorado's own separate tally put Denver County at 76 traffic deaths for 2025, up 21% from 2024, inside a statewide total of 701 that was itself up 2% year over year.³

The roads that keep coming up

Ask which corridors carry that risk and the same names surface. Interstate 25 recorded 11 traffic deaths within Denver in 2025, more than any other roadway in the city. Federal Boulevard had seven or eight, depending on how a crash near the city line gets counted. Colfax Avenue had five, and Sixth Avenue had three.² Denver's SPEED pilot program has already targeted two of those corridors: it spent $2 million saturating Federal Boulevard, between West 52nd Avenue and Floyd Avenue, and Alameda Avenue, between Sheridan Boulevard and Havana Street, with denser speed signage, retimed signals and license-plate speed cameras. Permanent cameras and an expansion to Colorado Boulevard are planned next.²

Pedestrians absorbed an outsized share of the damage. Through the first nine months of 2025, Denver counted 25 pedestrian deaths, up 50% from 16 over the same span in 2024, Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) director Amy Ford said; six of those 25 happened on local highways rather than surface streets. Scooter deaths jumped from one in 2024 to six in 2025, even as motorcycle deaths fell from 14 to six.⁴

Sheridan Boulevard, the corridor separating Denver from Lakewood and Wheat Ridge, is now the subject of its own corridor-wide safety study. Regional planners studied crash reports on Sheridan between Interstate 76 and US 285, covering 2018 through 2022, and counted 4,000 crashes, 228 serious injuries and 18 deaths on that stretch alone. The Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) has classified Sheridan as part of the region's High Injury Network, the roughly 9% of roads where most serious and fatal crashes concentrate, and is currently gathering feedback on corridor-wide fixes. "Sheridan is one of the most complex and neglected corridors in our region, as well as one of the most dangerous," DRCOG program manager Nora Kern said of the project.⁵

Sheridan isn't the only corridor under review. DRCOG has also completed safety studies of the Alameda Avenue and Pecos Street corridors, both flagged for the same mix of wide lanes, high speeds and pedestrian conflict points, and it's planning a follow-up to the East Colfax bus project, Colfax BRT Next, that would extend safety work from Interstate 225 out to E-470. Zoom out further and the regional numbers get worse: DRCOG counted an estimated 9,608 fatal or serious-injury crashes across the Denver region between 2020 and 2024, killing at least 1,564 people, a 30% increase over that five-year span. The council has set a target of zero regional traffic deaths by 2040 and zero serious injuries by 2045.⁶

One intersection, ten years, fifteen crashes

Not every dangerous intersection is a six-lane arterial. In Aurora, the junction of North Catawba Way and East 6th Parkway carries about 10,000 vehicles a day past a residential neighborhood of more than 400 homes and a community pool. It recorded 15 crashes between 2014 and 2023, including one that killed a motorcyclist in 2022. After a Cross Creek Metro District board member spent years pushing for a fix, the city is installing a full four-way traffic signal with pedestrian push-button crossings, expected to be finished by the summer of 2025. "We needed time to get some funding to pull it all together," Aurora principal engineer Carl Harline said.⁷

What's actually getting built

Money is moving toward some of these corridors. The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) finished a 5.5-mile resurfacing of I-25 through central Denver, from Alameda Avenue to 44th Avenue, adding new concrete barriers and restriped lanes along one of the state's busiest stretches of highway.⁸

On East Colfax Avenue, construction is underway on Denver's first bus rapid transit line, a $280 million project running from Civic Center Station to Interstate 225 in Aurora, with dedicated center-running lanes between Broadway and Yosemite Street. Funding includes $150 million from the Federal Transit Administration, $88 million from Denver, $28.4 million from DRCOG and $14 million from Aurora. Construction started at Broadway and Colfax and is scheduled to finish in the fourth quarter of 2027, with wider sidewalks, added trees and lighting meant to make the corridor safer for the pedestrians who currently share it with six lanes of traffic.⁹

CDOT's own crash listings, the underlying data behind most of these figures, are protected as confidential safety data under 23 U.S.C. Section 407, so location-specific detail generally has to come through an open records request rather than a public download.¹⁰

If you were hurt at one of these locations

If you were in a crash on I-25, Federal, Colfax, Sheridan or any other corridor on this list, the road's own crash history can matter to your case. A stretch with 4,000 documented crashes and a funded safety study behind it looks different, legally, than an ordinary residential block. An attorney familiar with Colorado crash claims can help you figure out what that history means for yours; you can find one through the legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. City and County of Denver, Vision Zero Statistics: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Citywide-Programs-and-Initiatives/Vision-Zero/Statistics

2. Westword, "Record Year for Denver Traffic Deaths Inspires Expanded Safety Measures": https://www.westword.com/news/denver-expands-road-safety-measures-after-record-traffic-deaths-40822440/

3. Colorado Department of Transportation, "Warm weather coincides with increase in traffic deaths in 2025": https://www.codot.gov/news/2026/january/increased-traffic-deaths-2025

4. Colorado Politics, "Pedestrian fatalities soar 50% in Denver, city officials say": https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2025/10/02/pedestrian-fatalities-soar-50-in-denver-city-officials-say/

5. Denver Regional Council of Governments, "DRCOG staff seek feedback on Sheridan safety recommendations": https://drcog.org/news/drcog-staff-seek-feedback-sheridan-safety-recommendations

6. Denver Regional Council of Governments, Regional Vision Zero: https://drcog.org/transportation-planning/planning-future/safety/regional-vision-zero

7. Denver7 (KMGH), "Aurora intersection with more than a dozen crashes in the past 10 years undergoing a major safety haul": https://www.denver7.com/follow-up/aurora-intersection-with-more-than-a-dozen-crashes-in-the-past-10-years-undergoing-a-major-safety-haul

8. Colorado Department of Transportation, "I-25 Central Denver Resurfacing Project is complete": https://www.codot.gov/news/2026/february-2026-news/i25-central-denver-resurfacing-complete

9. RTD-Denver, "Denver to Construct a Better, Faster Bus Service for East Colfax Ave": https://www.rtd-denver.com/community/news/denver-to-construct-a-better-faster-bus-service-for-east-colfax-ave

10. Colorado Department of Transportation, Crash Data: https://www.codot.gov/safety/traffic-safety/data-analysis/crash-data