Pittsburgh wasn't built for the way people actually move through it now. Steep hills, dead-end streets that reappear three blocks over, and a handful of bridges funneling traffic into a handful of choke points combine to put pedestrians and cyclists in the path of cars at predictable spots, over and over. The city logged 3,485 crashes in 2023, 20 of them fatal, with seven pedestrians and one cyclist among the dead1. Widen the window to 2010-2022 and pedestrians and cyclists made up close to a third of the 245 people killed in traffic citywide2. That risk isn't spread evenly. A small slice of streets carries almost all of it, and city engineers and county planners have gotten specific about where.
The streets that carry the risk
Pittsburgh's Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) built a High Injury Network map to find that slice. Its finding: 10% of the city's roads account for 76% of fatal crashes and 83% of serious-injury crashes3. An earlier version of the same analysis put the network at 122 miles of city streets responsible for 86% of serious-injury crashes and 76% of fatal ones2. Either way, the same corridors keep showing up: Bigelow Boulevard, Penn Avenue, Forbes Avenue, West Carson Street, East Ohio Street, Liberty Avenue, Frankstown Avenue, Baum Boulevard, Center Avenue, Grant Street and Boulevard of the Allies21.
Allegheny County has since run the same exercise regionally. The county's new Vision Zero Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, launched July 2, 2026 by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, the county, the city, PennDOT and Pittsburgh Regional Transit, found that 79% of severe crashes happen on just 9% of county roadways, and that the county lost 339 people in crashes over five years, with another 1,757 seriously injured4. The plan is funded by a $520,000 federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant plus a $130,000 local match, and it names a countywide high-injury network alongside priority corridors for investment4.
Where people have actually died
The map is an abstraction until you attach names and dates to it. On Feb. 20, 2025, a box truck struck and killed 48-year-old Jeremy Leval at Forbes Avenue and Pride Street in Uptown/the Bluff, a High Injury Network stretch with heavy foot traffic from UPMC Mercy, Duquesne University and Downtown5. A few months earlier, in early December 2024, a hit-and-run driver killed 37-year-old Jessie Maroney at Terrace Street and Darragh Street on the University of Pittsburgh campus6. The city's Fatal Crash Response Team answered by switching the intersection's overnight flashing signals to full stop-and-go operation around the clock, banning turns on red at all four approaches to Darragh Street, and giving pedestrians a three-second head start before the light turns green, a change repeated at Allequippa and Darragh streets and at O'Hara and Desoto streets nearby6.
Terrace Street has a longer history than that one crash. It has logged more than 24 motor-vehicle crashes in recent years, 16 of them hit-and-runs, and it's also where a UPMC shuttle bus struck and killed 29-year-old Emily Watson on Nov. 29, 2023, and where a UPMC shuttle killed 76-year-old Mary Flaherty at Terrace and Buffalo streets in September 20207.
East Ohio Street has its own recent entry. Around 2 a.m. on March 15, 2025, a driver in a silver pickup truck struck and killed a man at East Ohio Street and East Street in East Allegheny, then fled the scene onto Madison Avenue8.
Cyclists have their own hotspots
Bicycle crashes cluster at different spots than pedestrian crashes, but they cluster just as hard. On March 26, 2024, a semi-truck and a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus sat stopped side by side at a red light on Liberty Avenue at Stanwix Street downtown. When the light turned green, 67-year-old James Mills of Squirrel Hill tried to cross in front of both on his bike; the truck struck him, and he died four days later. Cyclists installed a ghost bike, a white-painted bicycle, at the intersection that April7.
Aiken Avenue in Shadyside has recorded roughly 60 crashes over five years, and Penn Avenue has been a persistent problem for cyclists because of illegal parking in its bike lane, a pattern that pushed the city to install concrete barriers protecting the lane after a crowdsourced reporting app called dashcam.bike logged around 4,000 near-miss reports to the city's 311 system, more than 95% of them bike-related7.
The danger doesn't stop at the city line
Some of the region's worst corridors sit outside Pittsburgh proper. Allegheny County's high-injury corridor list includes Kennywood Boulevard in West Mifflin, where a 13-year-old boy was killed in December 2025 following an earlier fatality there in 2021; Fifth Avenue in Oakland; South Aiken Avenue and Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield; Penn Avenue in Point Breeze; Butler Street in Lawrenceville; McKees Rocks Road and Lorish Road in McKees Rocks; and Home Street, Greensprings Avenue and Ravine Street across Munhall and West Mifflin9. The county has applied for a $14.5 million federal grant toward a combined $18.2 million in improvements at three of those sites, after putting up $32,500 of its own money for the underlying traffic study9.
Route 51, running from the Beaver County line through Pittsburgh's South Hills to Uniontown, is among the deadliest state roads in the region. Along its Clairton Boulevard and Saw Mill Run stretches, analysis of federal crash data from 2018 to 2022 reported by PublicSource found nearly six pedestrian and cyclist deaths a year, ranking it among Pennsylvania's five deadliest state roads10. The design is the problem: five-lane sections built for 35-55 mph speeds, crosswalks spaced far apart, and long stretches with no pedestrian-scale lighting after dark10.
What's changing
Pittsburgh formally joined the international Vision Zero movement in March 2024, the same month city officials noted that fatal crashes had climbed 71% between 2018 and 20202. DOMI, created in 2017 and now led by Director Kim Lucas with Michael Maloch as municipal traffic engineer, doubled its 2024 traffic-calming budget to $1.4 million and assigned five engineers to street-safety projects, while working through more than 1,000 open requests for traffic-calming measures2. City Council also passed an ordinance on Sept. 10, 2024 authorizing red-light cameras at accident-prone intersections, with a 60-day warning-only period for the first camera and 30 days for each one after3. The numbers have started to move: 2024 crashes fell below 3,000 citywide for the first time in years, and injury crashes are down 41% since 20151. Crash history back to 2004, for the city and the rest of Allegheny County, is public record through the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, searchable by street or municipality11.
If you're hit while walking or biking
Pennsylvania law gives pedestrians and cyclists the same right to use these roads as anyone driving a car, and a crash caused by a distracted or speeding driver isn't something you have to absorb alone. Get medical care first, even if the injury seems minor at the time; some of the worst injuries in these crashes don't announce themselves right away. Ask the responding officer for the crash report number and note the exact cross streets before the details blur. If you need help sorting out fault or dealing with an insurer, the legal directory at thatcarhitme.com can connect you with an attorney who handles pedestrian and bicycle cases in the Pittsburgh area.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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CBS News Pittsburgh, "Pittsburgh wants to make streets safer with Vision Zero" - https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/pittsburgh-vision-zero-traffic-related-deaths/
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WESA, "After 21 killed in 2023, Pittsburgh renews its vow to dramatically reduce traffic-related deaths," March 4, 2024 - https://www.wesanews.org/politics-government/2024-03-04/pittsburgh-traffic-calming-pedestrian-deaths-vision-zero
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WESA, "Update on Pittsburgh's Vision Zero efforts to end traffic fatalities," Oct. 31, 2025 - https://www.wesanews.org/development-transportation/2025-10-31/vision-zero-pittsburgh-infrastructure-redesign
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Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, "SPC, County, City, PennDOT, PRT Launch Vision Zero Comprehensive Safety Action Plan for Allegheny County to Eliminate Traffic Fatalities," July 2, 2026 - https://www.spcregion.org/2026/07/02/spc-county-city-penndot-prt-launch-vision-zero-comprehensive-safety-action-plan-for-allegheny-county-to-eliminate-traffic-fatalities/
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BikePGH, "A box truck driver struck and killed a pedestrian, 48-year-old Jeremy Leval, in Pittsburgh's Uptown / The Bluff," Feb. 21, 2025 - https://bikepgh.org/2025/02/21/pedestrian-fatality-pittsburgh-uptown-the-bluff/
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CBS News Pittsburgh, "Changes coming to Oakland intersections following deadly pedestrian crash" - https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pittsburgh/news/oakland-pittsburgh-intersection-traffic-changes-deadly-crash-pedestrian
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TribLive, "'Ghost bike' memorial triggers talk of bike, pedestrian safety in Pittsburgh" - https://community.triblive.com/c/downtown-pittsburgh-news/news/03aa7efe9147f7ae440b3c5ec40aad31
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CBS News Pittsburgh, "Man dead in East Allegheny after alleged vehicle and pedestrian incident" - https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/man-dead-east-allegheny-alleged-vehicle-pedestrian-incident/
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TribLive, "Allegheny County's high-injury traffic corridors targeted for safety improvements" - https://community.triblive.com/news/4086094
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PublicSource, "Until I can walk a pedestrian-friendly Route 51, I fear for my life," Aug. 25, 2024 - https://www.publicsource.org/pennsylvania-route-51-pedestrian-danger-bus-stops-pittsburgh/
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Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, Allegheny County Crash Data - https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/allegheny-county-crash-data