Nashville's pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots

On the afternoon of August 1, 2026, a driver ran a red light at 4th Avenue and Broadway, in the middle of downtown Nashville, and struck four pedestrians who had a walk signal in their favor. A 58-year-old visitor from Australia died after arriving at the hospital; three more people, including tourists from Florida and Knoxville, were hospitalized in serious condition.¹ The crash happened in daylight on the city's busiest tourist block, and it landed in the middle of what is already Nashville's worst stretch for pedestrian deaths in years.

A surge with numbers behind it

By July 27, 2026, Metro Nashville Police had logged 28 pedestrian deaths for the year, nearly double the 15 the city recorded across all of 2025.² The citywide fatal crash count was running well ahead of last year's pace too: 45 fatal crashes and 47 deaths by early June 2026, compared with 32 fatal crashes and 37 deaths at the same point in 2025, a year that ultimately closed with 103 fatal crashes and 115 deaths.² Nashville Public Radio's own count, taken a month earlier, found 13 pedestrian deaths through early May, against three at the same point in 2025, plus two cyclists and six motorcyclists killed.³ The exact tally shifts depending on the week a reporter calls MNPD, but the direction doesn't: after a few years of modest improvement, pedestrian deaths are climbing again, and they keep showing up on the same short list of streets.

The high injury network

That concentration has an official name. Nashville's 2022 Vision Zero Action Plan found that 6% of the city's streets account for nearly 60% of all fatal and serious-injury crashes, across walking, biking and driving combined.⁴ The Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure mapped those streets as the High Injury Network: wide, high-speed corridors, built and still owned by the state, that cut through dense residential and commercial areas where people have no real alternative to walking along or across them.⁵ Fifteen of the most dangerous stretches identified sit entirely on state routes controlled by the Tennessee Department of Transportation, not Metro.⁶ Vision Zero Advisory Committee chair Charlie Weingartner has said publicly that "we've not seen the city do the safety implementations that we would want or expect," even three years into the plan.⁶ Nine corridors made the original High Injury Network, among them Nolensville Pike, Murfreesboro Pike, Gallatin Pike, Dickerson Pike, Charlotte Pike, Lafayette Street and Main Street.⁵ Murfreesboro Pike and Gallatin Pike each turn up twice in NDOT's top-10 project priority ranking, part of a five-year plan covering roughly 100 projects and 50 intersections; citywide traffic deaths had already climbed from 106 in 2019 to 114 in 2020 and 131 in 2021 by the time NDOT adopted it.⁷

Nolensville Pike

Nolensville Pike shows the pattern most clearly. NDOT and the U.S. Department of Transportation are funding the We Are Nolensville Pike project, a $16.3 million rebuild, $13 million in federal Safe Streets and Roads for All money plus $3.2 million in local match, covering the 2.5 miles between McCall Street and Haywood Lane, with new sidewalks, pedestrian-scale lighting, mid-block crossings and rebuilt bus stops.⁸ The corridor keeps producing fatalities while the work is underway. On December 8, 2025, a 64-year-old man was struck and killed crossing Haywood Lane near Interstate 24 by a driver who briefly left the scene before returning to talk to officers.⁹ On May 18, 2026, an unidentified man died after being struck at Harding Place and Donelson Pike, one intersection over from the same corridor.¹⁰

Gallatin Pike and Main Street

On the east side, Gallatin Pike and Main Street form Nashville's other persistent hotspot. Metro officials have tied more than 800 crashes over three years to that corridor, citing high vehicle speeds and a lack of pedestrian infrastructure, and it's now targeted for rebuilding through the city's Choose How You Move program.³ In early May 2026, Billy Ray, a 58-year-old vendor for The Contributor street newspaper, was struck and killed by a semi-truck at Gallatin Pike and Trinity Lane in East Nashville.³ NDOT's separate Gallatin Pike and Main Street project is designed as a Complete Street, meant to give people walking, biking and riding transit a safe path through the corridor instead of just adding turn lanes.⁵

Lafayette Street

South of downtown, Lafayette Street has produced a cluster of deaths inside a single five-block stretch since 2023. Dave Norman Krajenka, 62, was killed at Lafayette Street and Fairfield Avenue in October 2025. Ronnie Wilson, 41, was critically hurt in a hit-and-run at the same intersection on March 27, 2026, and died on May 9. Then, in the 100 block of Lafayette Street on April 5, 2026, a driver fleeing a 2 a.m. crash killed Yulonda Parham, 31, and Kanon Oldham, 27, as they walked home from a nearby restaurant.¹¹ Neighbors along the corridor describe the same conditions found on every street on this list: speeding traffic and long gaps between marked crossings.¹¹

Cyclists on the same streets

Bicyclists are dying on these corridors too. On April 18, 2026, a 66-year-old man riding without lights or reflective gear was struck from behind and killed on Harding Place near Tampa Drive; the driver's gray Nissan Altima fled toward Antioch before it was recovered.¹² Earlier that same month, a 52-year-old cyclist who rode off a sidewalk was struck and killed by a pickup truck at 2nd Avenue North and Junior Gilliam Way in Germantown.¹³ Both crashes happened on streets without protected bike lanes, the same condition that keeps showing up across the High Injury Network.

What's funded, and what isn't yet

Nashville has real money behind these fixes now. Voters approved Choose How You Move in November 2024, a dedicated transportation funding program putting $104 million toward 2026 investments alone, including 86 miles of new sidewalks and signal upgrades at roughly two-thirds of the city's intersections, with an explicit focus on High Injury Network streets.¹⁴ NDOT's five-year Vision Zero plan separately earmarked $25 million for the next fiscal year, most of it aimed at the 100 priority projects on the network.⁷ But 2026 is also the final year of that five-year plan, and about half of the High Injury Network sits on state-owned roads, meaning NDOT can't rebuild them without the Tennessee Department of Transportation's cooperation, which has slowed several projects still stuck in planning and engineering.⁷

The legal backdrop

Tennessee law gives pedestrians the right of way in a crosswalk when a signal isn't controlling traffic, and requires drivers to stop and stay stopped until a pedestrian clears the crossing in a marked school zone.¹⁵ Several of the crashes above were hit-and-runs, a pattern serious enough that state lawmakers passed the James Bardsley Life Protection Act, known as Jimmy's Law, effective July 1, 2026. It requires a mandatory minimum of one year of confinement, served in full, plus a fine of $5,000 to $10,000, for drivers who flee a crash they knew or should have known was fatal.¹⁶ Anyone hurt walking or biking on one of these corridors, or a family member after a fatal crash, can find a Tennessee attorney through the legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Multiple people hit in crash on Lower Broadway in Nashville, NewsChannel5, https://www.newschannel5.com/news/state/tennessee/davidson-county/multiple-people-hit-in-crash-on-lower-broadway-in-nashville

2. Fatal crashes, pedestrian deaths up in Nashville, TN 2026: MNPD, WKRN, https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/fatal-crashes-pedestrian-deaths-up-nashville-2026/

3. Nashville pedestrian and roadway deaths have spiked in 2026, WPLN, https://wpln.org/post/nashville-pedestrian-and-roadway-deaths-have-spiked-in-2026/

4. Vision Zero Action Plan and Implementation Plan, Nashville.gov, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/transportation/plans-and-programs/vision-zero/action-plan

5. Metro Nashville Vision Zero, Nashville.gov, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/transportation/plans-and-programs/vision-zero

6. Amid string of pedestrian deaths, Vision Zero progresses slowly, Nashville Scene, https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/vision-zero-pedestrian-deaths-2026/article_6ae74ee8-3307-4564-9eae-680f446cb023.html

7. NDOT reveals 5-year Vision Zero draft plan to keep pedestrians safer, NewsChannel5, https://www.newschannel5.com/news/ndot-reveals-5-year-vision-zero-draft-plan-to-keep-pedestrians-safer

8. Nashville receives $13 million in federal funds for transportation safety project, Nashville.gov, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/mayor/news/nashville-receives-13-million-federal-funds-transportation-safety-project

9. Pedestrian fatally injured on Haywood Lane, Nashville.gov / Metro Nashville Police Department, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/police/news/pedestrian-fatally-injured-haywood-lane

10. Pedestrian fatally injured at Harding Place/Donelson Pike intersection, Nashville.gov / Metro Nashville Police Department, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/police/news/pedestrian-fatally-injured-at-harding-place/donelson-pike-intersection

11. Timeline: Fatal hit-and-runs, pedestrian deaths on Nashville's Lafayette Street corridor, Fox17, https://fox17.com/news/local/timeline-fatal-hit-and-runs-pedestrian-deaths-and-safety-concerns-along-lafayette-street-corridor-in-south-nashville

12. Bicyclist killed in Saturday morning hit and run crash on Harding Place, Nashville.gov / Metro Nashville Police Department, https://www.nashville.gov/departments/police/news/bicyclist-killed-saturday-morning-hit-and-run-crash-harding-place

13. Bicyclist killed in crash with pickup truck in Germantown, WKRN, https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/germantown-bicycle-crash/

14. Mayor O'Connell's Vision: Choose How You Move, Nashville.gov, https://www.nashville.gov/featured-initiatives/transit/choose-how-you-move

15. Tennessee Code 55-8-134, Pedestrians' right-of-way in crosswalks, Justia, https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-55/chapter-8/part-1/section-55-8-134/

16. Tennessee's Jimmy's Law increases penalties for fatal hit-and-run crashes, Fox17, https://fox17.com/news/local/tennessees-jimmys-law-increases-penalties-for-fatal-hit-and-run-crashes