Nielsen's San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market spans nine Bay Area counties, and three of its biggest cities keep publishing the same kind of finding: a small share of their streets absorbs most of the damage.
In San Francisco, just 12% of streets account for 68% of the city's severe and fatal crashes, a pattern the SFMTA calls the High Injury Network.1 The agency says it has applied "core safety tools," new crosswalk markings and longer walk signals among them, at every intersection on that network, and has logged more than 13,000 signal, sign, and traffic-calming installations since 2014.1
The numbers haven't caught up to the effort.
Traffic deaths in San Francisco rose from 34 in 2023 to 43 in 2024, eased to 25 in 2025, and by mid-March of 2026 the city had already recorded six deaths, five of them pedestrians.2 All five were killed at High Injury Network intersections: Bayshore Boulevard at Silver Avenue, Bayshore Boulevard at Arleta Avenue, Fourth Street at Channel Street, Mission Street at Naglee Avenue, and Kearny Street at Broadway.2 Every one of those locations had already seen pedestrian collisions in the five years before the fatal crash.2 San Francisco now has the highest share of any fatal crash that kills a pedestrian among large U.S. cities tracked: 52.9%.2
Oakland's International Boulevard problem
Oakland runs the same math on a similar map: 8% of its streets carry 60% of the city's severe and fatal collisions, according to the city's own High Injury Network analysis.3 A 2024 review of state crash records, drawing on SWITRS data from 2017 through 2023, ranked the city's 20 worst intersections, and International Boulevard shows up four separate times.4
The single worst spot on that list, International Boulevard at 73rd Avenue, recorded 89 injury crashes in that window.4 Hamilton Street at Hegenberger Road had 58 injuries and three deaths. International Boulevard at High Street had 57 injuries and a death, and High Street at Foothill Boulevard added 51 more injuries.4 Zoom out to the full corridor and International Boulevard has recorded 57 traffic deaths since 2002, an average of about three fatalities a year, with a spike of seven in a single year, 2017.5 The city's own recent tally shows some improvement: 23 traffic deaths in 2025, down from highs of 36 in both 2020 and 2022.6
San Jose's Priority Safety Corridors
San Jose has formally mapped its worst streets since 2015, when it named 17 Priority Safety Corridors that, despite covering only about 3% of the city's roadway, were tied to 30 to 40% of its fatal and severe-injury crashes each year.7 Those corridors include White Road, McKee Road, Santa Clara Street and Alum Rock Avenue, Story Road, Jackson Avenue, Capitol Expressway, King Road, Monterey Road, Senter Road, Blossom Hill Road, Branham Lane, Almaden Expressway, Saratoga Avenue, Fruitdale Avenue, and Hillsdale Avenue.78 The city's 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan roughly doubles that mileage and sets a target of cutting traffic deaths 30% by 2030, reaching zero by 2040.7
The urgency shows up in the year-over-year counts. San Jose logged 60 traffic deaths in 2021, then recorded 20 more in just the first three months of 2022, three times the pace of the same stretch the year before.9 Two intersections named repeatedly in city safety reviews are Tully Road at Senter Road and Monterey Road at Curtner Avenue.8 Where the city has actually rebuilt an intersection, the results show it: after Senter Road got median barriers and painted intersections, its count of deaths and serious injuries dropped from 15 to 5 in a single year.8
The road that connects all three cities
El Camino Real runs the length of the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose, and a data review by the Bay Area News Group flagged it, along with San Jose's own Monterey Road, as among the deadliest corridors in the region.5 It's the kind of wide, signal-timed arterial that shows up on High Injury Network maps in every city it passes through: higher speeds and long gaps between crossings add up over enough traffic volume.
Where this market ranks nationally
Smart Growth America's 2026 Dangerous by Design rankings put the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro at 65th out of 101 tracked metro areas, with 401 pedestrian deaths from 2020 through 2024 and an annual rate of 1.73 per 100,000 residents.10 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ranked 55th, with 191 pedestrian deaths over the same five years and a rate of 1.94 per 100,000.10 Neither metro sits in the nation's worst tier, but the report's own framing doesn't soften that: every metro on the list, including these two, is "too dangerous for people walking."10
New tools aimed at the intersections themselves
State law is starting to catch up with the local data. Assembly Bill 645 lets San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, plus three Southern California cities, run speed camera pilot programs through January 1, 2032, but only at locations that qualify as a high-injury corridor, a site with four or more recorded street-racing incidents, or a school zone.11 Fines run from $50 for going 11 to 15 mph over the limit up to $500 for triple-digit speeds, with reductions built in for low-income drivers.11
Separately, Assembly Bill 413 rewrote Vehicle Code section 22500 to bar parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk's approach (15 feet where there's a curb extension), a practice called daylighting meant to let drivers and pedestrians see each other before someone steps off the curb.12 Full citation authority under that law took effect January 1, 2025.12
If you're hurt at one of these intersections
A crash at a known High Injury Network location or Priority Safety Corridor can matter to your case. It can support an argument that the road design itself, not just the other driver, played a part in what happened. If you've been hurt in a crash anywhere in this market, an attorney in our legal directory can help you sort out what an intersection's crash history means for your claim.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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SFMTA, "Vision Zero SF," https://www.sfmta.com/vision-zero-sf
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The San Francisco Standard, "SF has the highest share of pedestrian traffic deaths in the U.S.," https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/17/sf-pedestrian-deaths-vision-zero/
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City of Oakland, "2024 High Injury Network (HIN)," https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safety/2024-High-Injury-Network-HIN
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The Oaklandside, "Where are Oakland's 20 most dangerous intersections?," https://oaklandside.org/2024/06/18/where-are-oaklands-20-most-dangerous-intersections/
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CBS News San Francisco, "Traffic data: Oakland's International Blvd. among deadliest roads in Bay Area," https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/international-blvd-oakland-among-deadliest-bay-area-roads-traffic-data/
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The Oaklandside, "Oakland's roads are slowly getting safer," https://oaklandside.org/2026/06/23/oaklands-roads-are-slowly-getting-safer/
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City of San José, Vision Zero Action Plan 2025, https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/118265/638761805841100000
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Patch, "San Jose makes slow progress on its most dangerous streets," https://patch.com/california/campbell/san-jose-makes-slow-progress-most-dangerous-streets
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San José Spotlight, "Here's how San Jose plans to prevent traffic fatalities," https://sanjosespotlight.com/heres-how-san-jose-plans-to-prevent-traffic-fatalities-deaths-hit-run-speeding-vision-zero/
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Smart Growth America, Dangerous by Design Rankings, https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/rankings/
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California State Legislature, Assembly Bill 645 (2023-2024), https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB645
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California State Legislature, Assembly Bill 413 (2023-2024), https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB413