Pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots in the Louisville metro

If you were hit while walking or biking in Louisville, the streets probably felt like they were built for everything except you. The city's own data backs that up. A short list of roads carries most of the serious harm, and the people on foot and on bikes pay a bigger price than their share of traffic would predict.

In January 2024, Vision Zero Louisville released its first High Injury Network, a map of the non-interstate streets where deaths and serious injuries concentrate. Palmer Engineering built it for Louisville Metro and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet using every reported crash from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2022.¹² The analysis covered public streets across the county but left out the interstates (I-64, I-71, I-264, and I-265) and parking-lot crashes. The result was blunt. About 53 corridors covering roughly 152 miles, near 5% of the city's non-interstate mileage, accounted for 55% of the fatal and suspected serious-injury crashes, some 1,213 in all.³

People walking and riding bikes absorb a large slice of that. A pedestrian or bicyclist was involved in 34% of Louisville's fatal crashes and 22% of its serious-injury crashes.¹ Since 2014, more than 900 people have died on the city's non-interstate roads, and 185 of them were on foot.¹

The corridors that keep showing up

Broadway is the clearest example. The stretch from 22nd Street to Baxter Avenue ranked as the single most dangerous roadway in Jefferson County, and Broadway from 22nd Street to 35th Street landed third on the same list.² The corridor runs straight through downtown and the western neighborhoods, wide and fast, with long gaps between safe crossings.

Other repeat offenders in the study included South 7th Street between Algonquin Parkway and South 9th Street, and Bardstown Road between Captain Place and Beulah Church Road out toward the Watterson Expressway.² Speeding data collected for the city's rightsizing work also flagged Taylorsville Road, Algonquin Parkway, and Dixie Highway as places where drivers routinely run well over the limit.⁴

One point from the study is worth holding onto if you are trying to figure out who is responsible for a dangerous road. Seventeen of the 20 worst stretches are owned by the state, not the city.² Fixing many of these hotspots depends on the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, not just Louisville Metro.

Where recent deaths have happened

The corridor map is a five-year picture. The day-to-day reality has been worse in stretches. By the middle of March 2024, at least nine pedestrians had already been killed on Louisville streets that year, according to Louisville Public Media.⁵ In one 24-hour span that same week, drivers hit four people and killed three: 17-year-old Clay Twyman at 24th and Bank Street, 38-year-old Aaron Nifong on the Clark Memorial Bridge (the Second Street Bridge over the Ohio River), and a third man on Interstate 64 near the I-65 interchange.⁵ LMPD Traffic Unit commander Craig Browning counted 19 fatal collisions to that point in the year, six of them pedestrians.⁵

Hit-and-runs make the toll harder to answer for. A WDRB review of state crash records found 628 hit-and-run crashes involving pedestrians in Jefferson County over five years, with 67 deaths.⁶ By late March 2024, the county had already logged 38 such crashes for the year, four of them fatal.⁶

How Louisville compares

Kentucky as a whole is not an easy place to be a pedestrian. The Governors Highway Safety Association, using federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System data, put Kentucky's pedestrian death rate at 2.08 per 100,000 residents in 2022, up from 1.64 in 2018.⁷ That is close to the national rate of 2.28, and Jefferson County, the state's largest and busiest county, drives a big part of the statewide total.

What the city is changing

Some of the worst corridors are being rebuilt. The Dixie Highway Improvement Project, known locally as the Dixie Do-Over, added sidewalks and lighting, widened existing walkways, and redesigned medians along one of the southwest side's most crash-prone arterials.⁸ On the east side, the Bardstown Road Safety Study looked at Bardstown Road and Baxter Avenue (U.S. 31E) from East Broadway to the Watterson Expressway (I-264). Its Phase 1 rebuild between East Broadway and Bonnycastle Avenue, finished in 2023, removed the old reversible lane lights and peak-hour parking rules and added floating curb extensions to shorten the distance people have to cross.⁹

The city is also using rightsizing, or road diets, to calm traffic on arterials where speeding and lane-weaving are common.⁴ And in May 2024, Louisville Metro Public Works applied for a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to fund 7.25 million dollars in improvements aimed at pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and people with disabilities.¹⁰

If you or someone you love was hit

Get the crash documented while it is fresh. A Louisville Metro Police report creates the official record, and it can matter later whether the location sits on the High Injury Network or at an intersection with a known history. If the road is state-owned, which most of the worst ones are, questions about signals, lighting, and crossing design may involve the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet as well as the city.²

Photograph the scene, the crossing, and any signs or signals. Save your medical records and write down the names of witnesses. Kentucky's insurance rules and injury-claim deadlines are specific, and they move faster than people expect after a serious injury. If you want to understand your options, you can find a personal injury attorney through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Vision Zero Louisville, Pedestrian Safety. https://louisvilleky.gov/government/vision-zero-louisville/pedestrian-safety

2. WDRB, New study ranks the 53 most dangerous stretches of roadway in Louisville. https://www.wdrb.com/news/new-study-ranks-the-53-most-dangerous-stretches-of-roadway-in-louisville/article_bd412078-dbec-11ee-86f7-d36511b1f84a.html

3. Vision Zero Louisville, High Injury Network. https://louisvilleky.gov/government/vision-zero-louisville/high-injury-network

4. Vision Zero Louisville, Rightsizing (Roadway Reconfiguration). https://louisvilleky.gov/government/vision-zero-louisville/roadway-reconfiguration-right-sizing

5. Louisville Public Media, Drivers hit four pedestrians, killing three, in 24 hours in Louisville (March 14, 2024). https://www.lpm.org/news/2024-03-14/three-pedestrians-in-24-hours-die-after-drivers-hit-them-another-injured

6. WDRB, State data reveals hit-and-runs involving pedestrians a persistent issue in Jefferson County. https://www.wdrb.com/news/crime-reports/state-data-reveals-hit-and-runs-involving-pedestrians-a-persistent-issue-in-jefferson-county/article_e82bae84-ed4e-11ee-b2f9-cbf907395c5a.html

7. Governors Highway Safety Association, Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State (2023 preliminary data), Table 4, source FARS and U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/2023%20Pedestrian%20Traffic%20Fatalities%20by%20State.pdf

8. Louisville Metro, Dixie Highway Improvement Project. https://louisvilleky.gov/government/metro-council-district-12/dixie-highway-improvement-project

9. Louisville Metro Public Works, Transportation Plans and Studies (Bardstown Road Safety Study). https://louisvilleky.gov/government/public-works/transportation-plans-and-studies

10. Louisville Metro, Safe Streets and Roads for All. https://louisvilleky.gov/government/vision-zero-louisville/safe-streets-and-roads-all