If you were just in a crash somewhere in the Portland area, there's a decent chance the intersection itself had a track record before you ever got there. The city tracks this closely, and the pattern is stark: a small slice of Portland's streets produces most of the deaths.
The 8 percent that does most of the damage
Portland's Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) maintains what it calls the High Crash Network, a set of 30 streets and 30 intersections identified from a decade of crash records. Those locations make up about 8% of the city's streets but accounted for an average of 67% of traffic deaths from 2020 through 2024, and 74% of deadly crashes in 2025 alone12. The network includes long, wide arterials that will be familiar to anyone who's driven cross-town: 82nd Avenue, SE Powell Boulevard, N Lombard Street, NE Sandy Boulevard, SE Division Street, SW Barbur Boulevard, N Interstate Avenue, and NE Glisan Street among them1.
The underlying numbers come from two places: Oregon's Accident and Insurance Report, which drivers must file after any crash involving injury, death, or at least $2,500 in property damage, and Portland Police Bureau investigations of the more serious incidents, including any crash involving a pedestrian, cyclist, or e-scooter rider taken away by ambulance3. ODOT usually doesn't finalize a given year's numbers until 12 to 18 months later3.
Within that network, PBOT ranks specific intersections by crash count. The five with the worst recent totals are:
- SE Foster Road at the I-205 off-ramp: 57 crashes, 2 deaths
- NE Halsey Street at 122nd Avenue: 75 crashes, 1 death
- NE Glisan Street at the I-84 ramp: 78 crashes
- N Vancouver Avenue at Weidler Street: 47 crashes, 1 death
- NE Glisan Street at 82nd Avenue: 56 crashes, 1 death1
Several of these show up again on the city's list of new automated camera locations, which isn't a coincidence. PBOT places speed and red light cameras specifically where the crash history justifies them4.
Why 82nd Avenue keeps coming up
82nd Avenue deserves its own mention. For decades it belonged to the Oregon Department of Transportation, even though it functions as a city street lined with businesses, bus stops, and apartment buildings. Between 2015 and 2019, the corridor recorded nearly 2,000 crashes and 76 people killed or seriously injured5. In 2022, Portland City Council approved a jurisdictional transfer that handed a 7-mile stretch, from NE Killingsworth Street to SE Clatsop Street, over to PBOT; ODOT kept ownership of the overpass at I-84 and the intersections with NE Killingsworth, NE Webster, and SE Powell6. Since then the city has put roughly $80 million into lighting and new pedestrian crossings on the corridor, with 14 crossings added between 2023 and 20275.
The cameras are watching now
As of mid-2026, more than 30 speed and intersection safety cameras operate across the High Crash Network, and PBOT and the Portland Police Bureau say they've issued over 69,000 citations from them since November 20257. New cameras went in this year at SE Powell Boulevard and SE 34th Avenue and at NE 82nd Avenue and NE Klickitat Street, joining existing units at locations like NE 122nd Avenue at Halsey, NE 82nd Avenue at Glisan, and a run of intersection cameras along SE Stark Street at 99th, 102nd, 122nd, and 148th4. "The deployment of speed and intersection safety cameras is a highly effective tool for ensuring that people driving obey the speed limit," PBOT director Millicent Williams said when the expansion was announced7.
What 2025 looked like, person by person
Thirty-nine people died in Portland traffic crashes in 2025, down from a record 69 in 2023 and the lowest count since 20182. Twenty of those 39 were pedestrians, eight were motorcyclists, eight were vehicle occupants, and three were cyclists2. Speeding was a factor in 41% of deadly crashes, and 72% happened at night. People 65 and older made up 33% of those killed, a sharp jump from the 10 to 14% range of prior years2.
Washington County, east county, and across the river
The danger doesn't stop at Portland's city limits, and the surrounding jurisdictions keep their own records. In Washington County, a June 2026 crash at SW Hillsboro Highway (Highway 219) and Scholls-Sherwood Road killed Brandon Henderson and prompted ODOT's Region 1 office to open a formal review of the intersection, weighing everything from signage to a roundabout against the corridor's crash history and Safety Priority Index System data8.
To the east, Multnomah County adopted a Transportation Safety Action Plan covering the urban parts of Gresham, Fairview, Wood Village, and Troutdale after finding that 104 people died and 473 more were seriously injured on those roads between 2013 and 20229.
Across the Columbia River, Vancouver, Washington keeps its own crash-weighted ranking of intersections. The top spot for 2016 through 2020 is SE Mill Plain Boulevard at SE Hearthwood Boulevard, an eight-lane crossing that saw one fatal pedestrian crash, two severe-injury crashes, and eight other injury crashes in that span, carrying roughly 35,000 vehicles a day on Mill Plain alone10. Not far behind is Mill Plain at SE Chkalov Drive, a block from the I-205 interchange, where a pedestrian was killed and a bicyclist seriously injured at the intersection itself10. SE 164th Avenue at SE Tech Center Drive also made the city's top three, with three fatalities and two severe injuries along that short stretch during the same five-year window10. Citywide, Vancouver recorded a record 15 traffic deaths in 202411, even as Washington state's overall fatality count fell 9.6% that year to 731, down from a 33-year high the year before12.
If you were hurt at one of these locations
A crash history doesn't decide fault in any individual case, but it does shape what investigators, insurers, and courts expect to find at a given corner. If you were injured at a location on this list, or anywhere else in the region, the police report and any available camera footage from PBOT, ODOT, or WSDOT can matter as much as your own account of what happened. An attorney who works these cases regularly can help you figure out what evidence to pull together before it disappears. You can find one through thatcarhitme.com's legal directory.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Portland Bureau of Transportation, "High Crash Network streets and intersections," https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/high-crash-network-streets-and-intersections
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City of Portland, "Portland 2025 Deadly Traffic Crash Report Summary," March 2026, https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/documents/portland-2025-deadly-traffic-crash-report-summary/download
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Portland Bureau of Transportation, "How crash data works," https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/crash-data
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Portland Bureau of Transportation, "Speed and intersection safety cameras," https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/safety-cameras
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Portland Bureau of Transportation, "82nd Avenue Critical Fixes," https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/82nd-avenue/construction/82nd-avenue-critical-fixes
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City of Portland news release, "Portland City Council unanimously approves Building a Better 82nd, with historic transfer of ownership to PBOT," April 28, 2022, https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2022/4/28/news-release-portland-city-council-unanimously-approves-building
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City of Portland news release, "Over 30 speed & intersection cameras operating across Portland's High Crash Network, issuing 69,000 citations since Nov., with more cameras coming soon," June 9, 2026, https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2026/6/9/over-30-speed-intersection-cameras-operating-across-portlands-high
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KATU, "Deadly crash prompts ODOT review of Hillsboro-area intersection," https://katu.com/news/local/katu-report-oregon-department-of-transportation-safety-intersection-southwest-hillsboro-highway-219-and-scholls-sherwood-road-deadly-crash-brandon-henderson
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Multnomah County news release, "Board adopts collaborative plan to improve safety on east Multnomah County's urban roads," https://multco.us/news/news-release-board-adopts-collaborative-plan-improve-safety-east-multnomah-countys-urban-roads
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City of Vancouver, Washington, "Local Road Safety Plan 2022-2026," August 2022, https://www.cityofvancouver.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/vancouver_lrsp_09122022.pdf
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The Columbian, "Vancouver saw a record 15 traffic deaths in 2024, while the state saw a decrease," June 7, 2025, https://www.columbian.com/news/2025/jun/07/vancouver-saw-a-record-15-traffic-deaths-in-2024-while-the-state-saw-a-decrease/
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Washington Traffic Safety Commission, "Preliminary Traffic Fatality Numbers for 2024 Decrease from 33-Year High in 2023," https://wtsc.wa.gov/20555-2/