If you were just in a crash in the St. Louis area, you're probably not surprised the same handful of streets keep coming up. Between 2018 and 2022, the region logged 349,528 reported crashes, or roughly 200 a day, according to East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the metro's federally designated transportation planning agency.1 St. Louis County accounted for about 41% of those crashes and the City of St. Louis another 21%.1 The rest were spread across St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties on the Missouri side and the Metro East counties across the Mississippi.
Speeding was a factor in 30% of the region's fatal and serious-injury crashes from 2018 to 2022.1 Pedestrians made up just 1% of all crashes but 11% of fatal-and-serious-injury crashes and 20% of fatalities.1 East-West Gateway's 2022 baseline put the region at 311.6 fatalities and 1,935 serious injuries a year on a five-year rolling average, with a stated goal of cutting that in half, to 155.8 and 967.5, by 2050.1
Gravois Avenue, the repeat offender
No corridor shows up on more "worst of" lists than Gravois Avenue on the city's south side. MoDOT's own crash data show nearly 1,000 injuries and 22 deaths on Gravois since 2020.2 In 2025 alone, the road (part of Route 30) recorded 23 crashes, 19 injuries, and 4 deaths involving pedestrians, cyclists, or wheelchair users, according to Trailnet's State of Our Streets report, which has named Gravois the city's most dangerous corridor for vulnerable road users five years running.23
Much of the danger concentrates at one spot: the six-way convergence of Gravois, Arsenal Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue, where the crossing spans five lanes (seven counting parking) and the posted speed limit is 35 mph.2 Trailnet CEO Cindy Mense has pointed to that speed gap directly. Going from 25 to 35 mph, she's said, is the difference between a survivable hit and a fatal one for someone on foot.2 Gravois and Cherokee Street is another recurring trouble spot on the same corridor.2
MoDOT and the city have a fix planned for Gravois, including lane reduction, intersection reconfiguration, and new lighting and sidewalks. Major construction isn't scheduled to start until 2029.2
Grand, Kingshighway, Broadway, and Chouteau/Manchester
Behind Gravois, the city's other high-injury corridors in 2025 were Grand Avenue, Kingshighway Boulevard, and the Chouteau/Manchester Avenue corridor (Route 100), each with one vulnerable-road-user death, and Broadway, which saw 8 crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists.43 Citywide, 2024 was the deadliest year for pedestrians in the six years Trailnet has tracked the data, with 23 deaths, and most of those collisions happened within 50 to 200 feet of an intersection rather than at the crosswalk itself.4
The city is mid-repave on several of these streets right now. Kingshighway is being rebuilt from Florissant Avenue to Gravois Avenue, and Grand, Goodfellow, Union, Jefferson, 4th Street, Convention Plaza, and Broadway are all slated for resurfacing and safety work between 2024 and 2026, funded in part by $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act money the city has put toward traffic calming.54
Lindbergh, Chambers, and West Florissant in St. Louis County
St. Louis County's numbers tell a similar story on a different set of roads. Lindbergh Boulevard was the county's deadliest corridor in 2025, with Chambers Road and the Yaeger Road/Milburn Road intersection in the Oakville area also flagged in Trailnet's crash analysis.3 Countywide, pedestrian deaths climbed to 36 in 2024, a 24% jump, and cyclist deaths rose from zero in 2023 and 2024 to two in 2025.53
Two public projects are responding to that. St. Louis County and MoDOT are splitting $4 million across 33 high-crash locations for guardrails and traffic-calming devices, and the county has separately committed $32 million to rebuild the West Florissant corridor between Solway and Stein roads.5 Both are smaller than a $52 million MoDOT-and-county design-build project touching more than 240 locations across St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and Jefferson County, justified by a count of 5,321 fatal and serious-injury crashes across those three counties between 2016 and 2020.6 That project, underway since April 2024 and due to wrap by late 2026, is installing rumble strips, guardrails, signal upgrades, and intersection conflict-warning systems at the affected sites.6
The Metro East side
The St. Louis media market runs well past the Mississippi, and the Illinois side has its own fix worth noting. The Illinois Department of Transportation rebuilt the Route 15/Route 158 interchange in Belleville, replacing three closely spaced signalized intersections, including Route 158 at Route 13, with two roundabouts. The project won a Special Achievement Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois for eliminating the conflict points that were driving the interchange's congestion and crash history.7
Who gets hurt, and where the state stands
Trailnet's most recent equity analysis found that the census tracts with the highest vulnerable-road-user crash counts are 3.6 times more likely than the regional average to include households without a vehicle, and 9 times more likely to rely on public transit, a pattern the report ties to decades of underinvestment in sidewalks and crossings in those neighborhoods.8 East-West Gateway's regional numbers point the same direction: only 18% of the region's population lives in what the agency classifies as disadvantaged areas, but those areas account for nearly 40% of fatal and serious-injury crashes.1
Statewide, MoDOT's Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment found that more than 80% of pedestrian and cyclist crashes happen at intersections in urbanized areas, and 58% occur in lower-income neighborhoods.9 Missouri as a whole recorded 991 traffic deaths in 2023, a 6% drop from 2022, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.10
If you've been hurt at one of these intersections
None of this data changes what matters right after a crash: get medical attention, and get a police report on file that names the intersection and the conditions there. If something about the intersection itself, a blocked sightline or a malfunctioning signal, contributed, that's worth raising with whoever handles your claim. It's also part of why cities, counties, and MoDOT keep records like the ones cited here in the first place. If you need help finding a local attorney to sort out fault and damages, thatcarhitme.com's legal directory lists options in the St. Louis area.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
-
East-West Gateway Council of Governments, "Gateway to Safer Roadways: St. Louis Regional Safety Action Plan" (June 2024), https://www.ewgateway.org/gtsr/
-
St. Louis Public Radio, "Gravois is one of St. Louis' deadliest streets. A safety overhaul is in the works, for 2029" (July 1, 2026), https://www.stlpr.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2026-07-01/gravois-is-one-of-st-louis-deadliest-streets-a-safety-overhaul-is-in-the-works-for-2029
-
St. Louis Magazine, "Gravois is still deadly, but other St. Louis streets are getting calmer, Trailnet reports," https://www.stlmag.com/news/gravois-trailnet-crash-report-2025/
-
Mound City Messenger, "City Data Shows Limited Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety Progress" (July 9, 2026), https://moundcitymessenger.com/2026/07/09/city-data-shows-limited-pedestrian-and-cyclist-safety-progress/
-
St. Louis Public Radio, "Record pedestrian deaths in St. Louis city and county in 2024" (May 1, 2025), https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2025-05-01/report-shows-st-louis-region-sees-its-deadliest-year-for-pedestrians
-
Missouri Department of Transportation, "Safety Improvements Project: A Lifesaving Partnership," https://www.modot.org/projects/SLSafetyProject
-
Horner & Shifrin, "Illinois Route 15 at Route 158 Interchange Reconstruction" (Illinois Department of Transportation project), https://www.hornershifrin.com/projects/il15-il158-interchange-reconstruction/
-
St. Louis Public Radio, "Trailnet's report shows St. Louis communities of color are impacted the most by traffic violence" (June 26, 2026), https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-06-26/trailnets-report-st-louis-communities-color-impacted-most-traffic-violence
-
Missouri Department of Transportation, "Missouri Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment" (November 2025), https://www.jeffersoncitymo.gov/MoDOT_Statewide_VRU_Safety_Assessment_PDFUA.pdf
-
Missouri State Highway Patrol, Statistical Analysis Center, Missouri Traffic Crashes statistics, https://apps.mshp.dps.mo.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/pdf/2025.pdf