Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Hotspots in Miami-Fort Lauderdale

South Florida keeps landing on the wrong list. Smart Growth America's 2026 Dangerous by Design report ranks the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area 17th deadliest in the country for people on foot, with 1,062 pedestrian deaths recorded from 2020 through 2024, up from 945 in the prior five-year stretch.¹ Florida as a whole ranks the 5th most dangerous state for pedestrians, averaging 3.32 deaths per 100,000 residents a year.¹ None of that is abstract if you live here. It shows up on specific roads, at specific intersections, on the routes you already drive, walk, or bike every day.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale media market covers Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, and each one tracks its own crash data, its own high-injury corridors, and its own agency now trying to fix them.

Miami-Dade County: a countywide network, not scattered bad luck

Miami-Dade sees close to 300 traffic fatalities a year, and crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists account for roughly 40% of them, according to the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization.² The county's Department of Transportation and Public Works has also flagged a nearly 40% increase in pedestrian and cyclist crashes between 2012 and 2022.³

That pattern isn't spread evenly across the map. In December 2023, Miami-Dade won a $16.2 million Safe Streets and Roads for All grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to rebuild 24 locations on the county's High Injury Network. Those 24 locations make up only about 20% of the county's total road miles, yet they account for 86% of all fatal and severe-injury crashes.³ The grant funds new signage, pavement markings, signalization, lighting, sidewalks, and pedestrian ramps at 14 midblock crossings and nine intersections, plus converting one travel lane into a shared-use path.³

FDOT District Six, which covers Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, is running parallel corridor studies aimed at the same problem. Current and recently completed work targets SR A1A/MacArthur Causeway, SR 856/William Lehman Causeway, US 41/SW 40th Street (Bird Road), a planned Little Havana east-west bicycle route, SR 972/Coral Way at SW 13th Street, SR 94/Kendall Drive, and the SR 826 Palmetto Expressway frontage road.⁴ Closer to street level, FDOT finished pedestrian safety upgrades at SR 934/NW 79th Street at NW 32nd Avenue and at SR 25/NW 36th Street on January 30, 2026.⁵

Enforcement runs alongside the engineering work. From August 25, 2025 through May 8, 2026, the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is running an FDOT-funded high-visibility campaign, sending its Motorcycle Unit to pre-identified high-crash locations countywide for education and enforcement aimed at drivers, walkers, and cyclists alike.⁶

Broward County: a handful of streets carrying most of the danger

Broward's numbers are blunter. County-wide, an average of 5 to 6 crashes involving someone walking or biking happen every day, and more than 80% of those crashes end in an injury or death, per the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization's Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Action Plan.⁷ Kittelson & Associates, the firm that built that plan for the MPO, notes Broward is consistently ranked among the four most dangerous counties in the country for people walking and biking.⁸

The plan sorted the county's worst locations into five hotspot types: urban intersections, suburban intersections, urban corridors, suburban corridors, and beach-access corridors.⁷ Two named examples stand out. Sunrise Boulevard, from NE 13th Avenue to Middle River Drive, was flagged as an urban-corridor hotspot. State Road 7 at Oakland Park Boulevard was flagged as a suburban-intersection hotspot.⁷ SR 7 has since gone through a dedicated Multimodal Corridor Study aimed at short- and long-term fixes for every mode using that road.⁹

Broward and the Broward MPO have since scaled the same problem up countywide through a Safe Streets and Roads for All Regional Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, backed by a $5 million federal grant. That plan's baseline count: 1,014 traffic deaths and 4,702 serious injuries on Broward streets, with 77% of all crashes concentrated on just 6% of the county's roadway miles.¹⁰

Palm Beach County: Military Trail and Okeechobee Boulevard carry the load

Palm Beach County adopted its own Vision Zero Action Plan in 2019 and updated it in 2021 through the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency.¹¹ The follow-on Palm Beach County Safety Action Plan reviewed five years of crash records: more than 134,000 total crashes, over 2,400 resulting in serious injury, and more than 700 involving a fatality. That data built the county's own High Injury Network, concentrating the worst crashes onto a defined set of corridors and intersections.¹¹

Okeechobee Boulevard (State Road 704) sits squarely on that network, an east-west artery carrying commuter traffic, buses, and commercial trucks along with a heavy volume of people on foot and on bikes.¹¹ Its intersection with Military Trail in suburban West Palm Beach was the single most crash-prone intersection in the county in 2024, with 119 recorded crashes, up from 92 in 2023, and it has held one of the top spots for more than five years running, according to county traffic engineers.¹²

It isn't the only one worth naming. County data on its top 200 intersections shows 9,246 crashes in 2024 versus 6,813 in 2020, a 36% jump in five years.¹² Other repeat offenders from that same 2024 count:

• South Military Trail and Forest Hill Boulevard: 101 crashes in 2024, flat from 101 in 2023
• North Alt. A1A and East Indiantown Road in Jupiter: 95 crashes in 2024, up from 78
• Atlantic Avenue and South Military Trail in Delray Beach: 89 crashes in 2024, up from 55

If you were hurt on one of these streets

None of this data changes what to do right after a crash. Get medical care, get a police report on file with whichever agency responded (Miami-Dade Police, Broward Sheriff's Office, or the local municipal department), and hold onto any photos or witness information from the scene. If you were hit while walking or biking on one of these known high-injury corridors, that history can matter to how your claim gets evaluated. An attorney who handles pedestrian and bicycle cases in South Florida can help you sort out what the crash report and roadway data actually mean for your situation. You can find one through the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Smart Growth America, "Dangerous by Design 2026: State and Metro Rankings," https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/2026-dbd-rankings/

2. Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization, "Bicycle Pedestrian Program," https://www.miamidadetpo.org/tpo/bicycle-pedestrian-program.page

3. Miami-Dade County, "Miami-Dade County receives $16.2M Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for Vision Zero initiative," https://www.miamidade.gov/global/release.page?Mduid_release=rel1702605530122623

4. Florida Department of Transportation District Six, "Bicycle Pedestrian Mobility Improvement Program," https://www.fdotmiamidade.com/bicycle-pedestrian-mobility-improvement-program

5. Florida Department of Transportation District Six, "Pedestrian Safety Project S.R. 934/NW 79 Street and S.R. 25/NW 36 Street in Miami-Dade County Delivers Key Safety Improvements," https://www.fdotmiamidade.com/news/article/pedestrian-safety-project-s-r-934-nw-79-street-and-s-r-25-nw-36-street-in-miami-dade-county-delivers-key-safety-improvements

6. Miami-Dade County, "Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Campaign," https://www.miamidade.gov/global/release.page?Mduid_release=rel1770048855478171

7. Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, "Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Action Plan," https://www.browardmpo.org/projects-studies/multimodal/completed-projects-multimodal/bicycle-pedestrian-safety-action-plan

8. Kittelson & Associates, "Broward MPO Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Action Plan," https://www.kittelson.com/work/broward-mpo-bicycle-pedestrian-safety-action-plan/

9. Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, "State Road 7 Multimodal Corridor Study Finished," http://www.browardmpo.org/index.php/news-updates/197-state-road-7-multimodal-corridor-study-finished

10. Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, "Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A)," https://www.browardmpo.org/major-initiatives/ss4a

11. Palm Beach County Safety Action Plan, https://www.palmbeachcountysafetyactionplan.com/ ; Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency, "Safety," https://palmbeachtpa.org/safety

12. AOL News, "Crashes surge at Palm Beach County's most dangerous intersections," https://www.aol.com/news/crashes-surge-palm-beach-countys-162704537.html