Miami and Fort Lauderdale's most dangerous intersections

Miami-Dade County logged 60,000 traffic crashes and 272 deaths in 2024. Broward County added another 38,338 crashes and 235 deaths of its own that same year¹. Combined, that's more than 98,000 wrecks and over 500 fatalities across two counties whose 4.8 million residents share some of the busiest arterial roads in Florida with pedestrians and cyclists². The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area now ranks 17th among the country's 101 largest metros for pedestrian danger, with 1,062 people killed while walking between 2020 and 2024, up from 945 in the previous five-year stretch. Florida as a whole ranks 5th most dangerous state for pedestrians, with 3,726 deaths over that same period³.

Those rankings aren't abstract. Miami-Dade and Broward transportation planners have mapped, corridor by corridor and intersection by intersection, exactly where the crashes cluster. Here's what the data shows, and what's already being redesigned.

Miami-Dade's high-injury network

Miami-Dade County's Department of Transportation and Public Works built a High-Injury Network for its 2024 Vision Zero Action Plan by mapping five years of crash data, 2018 through 2022, and weighting fatal and vulnerable-user (pedestrian and bicyclist) crashes more heavily than routine ones⁴. Countywide, that five-year window held 7,314 crashes resulting in a death or incapacitating injury, an average of 105 fatalities and 459 severe injuries a year. On county, city, and other local roads alone, excluding the state highways FDOT maintains directly, the plan counted 2,505 of those crashes. Sixty-two percent of them, 1,554 crashes, happened inside the county's federally designated disadvantaged communities⁴.

The single most dangerous corridor per mile is West 16th Avenue in Hialeah, between Okeechobee Road and West 68th Street: 2.5 miles that saw 26 KSI (killed or seriously injured) crashes, including 6 deaths, over that five-year span. Ranked by raw fatality count rather than density, two corridors stand out even more. NW 17th Avenue in Miami, an 8.1-mile stretch between SW 8th Street and NW 119th Street, recorded 70 KSI crashes and 17 deaths. NW 22nd Avenue, an 11.1-mile corridor running through Miami Gardens, Opa-locka, Miami, and unincorporated county land, recorded 69 KSI crashes and 22 deaths, the highest death toll of any corridor on the list⁴. The county's top five corridors by crash density:

• West 16th Avenue (Okeechobee Road to West 68th Street), Hialeah: 26 KSI crashes, 6 deaths, 2.5 miles
• NW 20th Street (NW 27th Avenue to North Miami Avenue), Miami: 27 KSI crashes, 5 deaths, 2.8 miles
• West 29th Street (Okeechobee Road to Palm Avenue), Hialeah: 16 KSI crashes, 5 deaths, 2.0 miles
• NW 17th Avenue (SW 8th Street to NW 119th Street), Miami: 70 KSI crashes, 17 deaths, 8.1 miles
• NW 62nd Street (Okeechobee Road to NW 6th Avenue), Miami, Hialeah, and unincorporated county: 43 KSI crashes, 12 deaths, 5.2 miles

The intersections already being redesigned

Separate from the corridor-level network, Miami-Dade's Transportation Planning Organization commissioned an Intersection Safety Analysis that screened 13 candidate intersections using 2016-2020 crash data⁵. NW 127th Avenue and NW 17th Street had the most crashes of the group, 54 over five years, followed by NE 2nd Avenue and NE 1st Street with 52. Three intersections moved forward for funding because their crash patterns, mostly angle, left-turn, and sideswipe collisions, are exactly what a small roundabout is built to fix: North Miami Avenue at N 195th Street (40 crashes), North Miami Avenue at N 163rd Street (29 crashes, 70 to 75 percent angle or left-turn related), and SW 84th Avenue at SW 38th Street (35 crashes, 97 percent angle, left-turn, or sideswipe)⁵.

FDOT's District Six office approved all three for Highway Safety Improvement Program funding in September 2021. Design work landed in fiscal year 2024, and construction is scheduled for fiscal year 2026, which is now⁵. If you drive through North Miami Avenue this year and see a mini-roundabout going in where a stop sign used to be, that's this project.

Broward and Fort Lauderdale's numbers

Broward tells a similar story on different streets. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles recorded 38,338 crashes in Broward County in 2024, a 4.9 percent drop from 2023's 40,304. Fatalities moved the opposite direction, rising 7.3 percent, from 219 to 235¹. Pedestrians and cyclists absorbed a disproportionate share of that increase: 1,219 pedestrian crashes and 69 pedestrian deaths in 2024, up from 67 the year before, plus 1,008 bicyclist crashes and 22 bicyclist deaths, a jump of more than 83 percent from 2023's 12¹.

Federal researchers have flagged this part of the state for over a decade. The Federal Highway Administration's own accounting found the South Florida region, anchored by Broward, recorded the highest number of pedestrian deaths of any region in the country between 2010 and 2019: 1,675⁶. One corridor FHWA singled out for a fix is Wilton Drive, which Broward's Metropolitan Planning Organization rebuilt under its Complete Streets Master Plan. Bicycle and pedestrian crashes there fell 66 percent, severe and fatal crashes fell 75 percent, and travel times still improved by roughly half⁶.

Why the same roads keep producing crashes

Across both counties, the pattern is consistent: it's the wide arterial roads, not the interstates or the quiet residential streets, doing the damage. Miami-Dade's own analysis found that major roads carry 92 percent of its high-injury network mileage while making up just 11 percent of the county's total road mileage⁴. These are streets built for speed and traffic volume, with long gaps between marked crossings. Timing matters too. Vulnerable road user crashes in Miami-Dade peak at 7 p.m., when evening traffic overlaps with people walking home from work, school, or the bus stop⁴.

Miami-Dade's Vision Zero program has set a target of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2040⁴. Broward's Wilton Drive rebuild already shows what a redesigned corridor can do to a crash count, and the roundabouts going into North Miami Avenue this year will be the next test case. If you've been hurt in a crash at one of these intersections, or anywhere else in South Florida, an attorney who knows the local roads can help you understand your options. You can find one in our legal directory.

This article is for general information only. It isn't legal advice.

Sources

1. Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, 2024 Florida Traffic Crash Facts Annual Report. https://www.flhsmv.gov/pdf/crashreports/2024-Crash-Report.pdf

2. U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts: Miami-Dade County, Florida and Broward County, Florida. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamidadecountyflorida/PST045224 and https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/browardcountyflorida/PST120224

3. Smart Growth America, Dangerous by Design 2026 state and metro rankings. https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/2026-dbd-rankings/

4. Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works, 2024 Miami-Dade County Vision Zero Action Plan (March 2024). https://www.miamidade.gov/resources/transportation_publicworks/documents/2024-vision-zero-action-plan.pdf

5. Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization and Kittelson & Associates, Intersection Safety Analysis Executive Summary (November 2021). https://www.miamidadetpo.org/library/studies/intersection-safety-analysis-executive-summary-2021-11.pdf

6. Federal Highway Administration, National Safety Awards Spotlight EDC Innovations, Innovator Issue 89 (March/April 2022). https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/innovation/innovator/issue89/page_03.html