Pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots in Kansas City

If you were hit while walking or biking in Kansas City, you were probably not in a random spot. You were most likely on one of a handful of streets the city already knows are dangerous.

In 2025, 68 people died in Kansas City traffic crashes, and almost half of them were on foot or on a bicycle.¹ The year before, in 2024, 97 people were killed, including 17 pedestrians and one bicyclist, across 85 fatal crashes.² Deaths fell 30% between those two years, which is real progress, yet Kansas City has still ranked fifth among the 50 largest U.S. cities for fatal crashes.¹² The Beacon, a local newsroom, put the city's rate at roughly 18 deaths per 100,000 residents a year.³

Where the crashes cluster

Kansas City's own data points to a small set of corridors. Through Vision Zero, the safety program the City Council adopted in 2020 with a goal of ending traffic deaths by 2030, Public Works found that most fatal and serious-injury crashes happen on just 12% of the city's streets, a group it calls the High Injury Network.⁴⁵ The names on that list come up again and again: Truman Road, Independence Avenue, Prospect Avenue, Troost Avenue, Ward Parkway, and Southwest Trafficway.⁵³

The Beacon's review of 190 traffic deaths in 2022 and 2023 backed this up. About a fifth of those deaths happened on just five roads, and Truman Road alone accounted for 12 of them.³ Of the 46 people killed while walking or biking over those two years, more than half died east of Troost Avenue and in the historic Northeast, the areas with the thinnest sidewalks and lighting.³

Prospect Avenue and the deadliest intersections

Prospect Avenue shows the pattern most clearly. It has seen nine fatal crashes in recent years, which places it among the ten deadliest streets in the city, and one 1.86-mile stretch between Linwood and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevards recorded 117 crashes from 2018 to 2022.⁶ In 2024 the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Kansas City a $10 million Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, matched with $2.5 million in city funds, to rebuild that stretch with wider sidewalks, curb extensions, better bus stops, and pedestrian-level lighting.⁶

Intersections are where a lot of the harm happens. Of the 190 deaths in 2022 and 2023, 45 occurred at intersections, with drivers running red lights the leading cause.³ The Beacon named three that stood out: Prospect Avenue at 63rd Street, Shoal Creek Parkway at Missouri 152 in the Northland, and 31st Street at Van Brunt Boulevard on the east side.³ If your crash happened at one of these, the city already has it in its data.

Independence Avenue and the Northeast

Independence Avenue runs straight through the Northeast neighborhoods where pedestrian deaths concentrate, and city audits rank it among the deadliest corridors in Kansas City.⁷ In the summer of 2026 the city started installing a HAWK signal, short for High-Intensity Activated crossWALK, at Independence and Garfield, where kids cross to reach nearby schools. The roughly $1 million project drew support from several Northeast neighborhood groups and the Public Improvement Advisory Committee.⁷ The Federal Highway Administration lists these beacons among its proven safety countermeasures and credits them with cutting pedestrian crashes by 55% and total crashes by 29%.⁸

The Troost Avenue overhaul

Troost Avenue carries a heavy toll. Over the past decade, 26 people have died along the corridor and it has logged more than 3,600 crashes, from Truman Road down to Bannister Road.⁹ After a pedestrian was killed near 51st Street, the city rebuilt that crossing and added new stoplights in 2025.¹⁹ Kansas City is pursuing a $21 million federal RAISE grant to redesign most of the street for people on foot, on bikes, and on transit, and the City Council approved a $500,000 consultant contract to find fixes for the ten worst streets and intersections on the High Injury Network.⁹ Wornall Road is also being narrowed from four lanes to two with a center turn lane, the kind of "road diet" the city completed 13 of in 2025 alone.¹

Who gets hit

The danger is not spread evenly. Kansas City's 2022 action plan found that Black residents were about twice as likely to be killed and nearly four times as likely to be injured in a crash than white residents, and that serious crashes were twice as likely in transportation-disadvantaged parts of town.⁵⁶ The Beacon's numbers were just as stark: Black residents made up 40% of pedestrian deaths while accounting for 26% of the population.³

A statewide and bi-state problem

The trend reaches well past the city line. Missouri recorded 148 pedestrian deaths in 2024, the most ever in the state and a 16% jump from the year before, even as total roadway deaths fell 4% to 954, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation.¹⁰ Most of those pedestrian deaths happened after dark.¹¹ On the Kansas side of the metro, the Kansas Department of Transportation found that pedestrians make up more than 70% of the vulnerable road users killed or seriously hurt across the state.¹²

What the location means for your case

Where you were hit matters. A crash on a documented High Injury Network corridor, or at an intersection the city has already flagged, comes with a paper trail. Police reports, Vision Zero audits, and MoDOT or KDOT crash records can show that a driver was speeding or ran a light at a spot the agencies already knew was hazardous. That history can matter when you're deciding whether to bring a claim. If you're at that point, you can find a personal injury attorney through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

Kansas City cut its traffic deaths by nearly a third in a single year, so these corridors can be made safer.¹ Most of them just haven't been fixed yet.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. KCUR, "Kansas City saw traffic deaths drop by 30% in 2025." https://www.kcur.org/housing-development-section/2026-01-06/kansas-city-traffic-deaths-2025-vision-zero-road-safety

2. KCUR, "97 people died in car crashes in Kansas City in 2024." https://www.kcur.org/housing-development-section/2025-01-01/95-people-died-in-car-crashes-in-kansas-city-in-2024-the-city-will-keep-trying-to-make-roads-safer

3. The Beacon, "Data dive: Why Kansas City car crashes are so dangerous." https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/2024/07/08/kansas-city-car-crashes-data-dive/

4. City of Kansas City, Missouri, Vision Zero and the High Injury Network. https://www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/departments/public-works/vision-zero-mobility/high-injury-network

5. KCUR, "Kansas City traffic deaths keep going up, while its effort to make roads safer is underfunded." https://www.kcur.org/housing-development-section/2024-01-02/kansas-city-traffic-deaths-safe-roads-vision-zero-street-improvements-bike-lanes

6. KCUR, "Prospect Avenue, one of Kansas City's most dangerous roads, will get a federally-funded overhaul." https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2024-09-10/prospect-avenue-kansas-city-dangerous-roads-federal-grant-safe-streets-roads-4-all

7. KCTV5, "New traffic signal coming to Independence Avenue to protect pedestrians, school children." https://www.kctv5.com/2026/07/24/new-traffic-signal-coming-independence-avenue-protect-pedestrians-school-children/

8. Federal Highway Administration, Proven Safety Countermeasures: Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/proven-safety-countermeasures/pedestrian-hybrid-beacons

9. KCUR, "Kansas City is trying to overhaul Troost Avenue and fix more of its dangerous roads." https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-01-17/kansas-city-dangerous-roads-troost-vision-zero-city-council

10. Missouri Department of Transportation, "Missouri Roadway Fatalities Continue to Trend Downward." https://www.modot.org/node/62240

11. KSHB 41, "Missouri traffic data offers good news for motorists, bad news for pedestrians." https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/transportation/overall-roadway-fatalities-decrease-missouri-sees-record-highs-in-pedestrian-deaths

12. Kansas Department of Transportation, 2023 Kansas Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment. https://www.ksdot.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/9126/638739380011030000