Walking or biking around Richmond, Petersburg, and the counties in between has become measurably more dangerous, and the crashes don't spread out evenly. They pile up on the same wide, fast roads and at the same intersections, often after dark. If you or someone in your family was hit on foot or on a bike, understanding where and how these crashes happen can help you make sense of what occurred.
Across Virginia in 2024, 126 pedestrians and 25 bicyclists were killed, out of 918 traffic deaths total.1 Pedestrians alone were nearly 14% of everyone who died on state roads that year.1 Two patterns in the state data repeat locally: about 82% of pedestrian deaths happened in darkness, and roughly 71% happened somewhere other than an intersection, meaning people crossing where there was no signal or marked crosswalk.1
Richmond's high injury network
Richmond has studied its own crashes closely, and the finding is blunt. A small set of streets carries most of the harm. The city's Vision Zero Action Plan identifies a "High Injury Street Network" that is just 7% of Richmond's road mileage but accounts for 62% of all fatal and serious injury crashes.2 Pedestrians are more than a quarter of the people killed in city crashes.2 The plan, adopted after a 2016 City Council resolution and a 2017 mayoral pledge, set a goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.23
The city isn't on track. Richmond recorded 22 traffic deaths in 2025, 13 of them pedestrians.4 Six people on foot were killed in a single three-week stretch that December.4 The toll carried into 2026, when Virginia Living editor Hope Cartwright was killed in a hit-and-run at Second and East Cary streets on February 16.5
A few roads come up over and over. Hull Street Road, one of the worst corridors on the high injury network, is getting about $37 million in upgrades, including new sidewalks, shared-use paths, pedestrian hybrid beacons, and crosswalks.5 Semmes Avenue and Broad Rock Boulevard on the South Side carry heavy foot traffic with thin pedestrian infrastructure.5 The intersection of Broad and Belvidere streets sits on the high injury network too.6 The city has leaned hard on slower speeds, building roughly 400 speed tables and proposing a cut in the default limit from 25 to 20 mph.45
Enforcement shifted as well. Richmond Police reported 17 traffic deaths in 2024, down from 25 in 2023, a 32% drop, alongside more speed and DUI enforcement and new school-zone and corridor safety cameras, including one on Semmes Avenue.6 City Traffic Engineer and Vision Zero Coordinator Michael Sawyer and Police Chief Rick Edwards have both tied the work to street design as much as driver behavior.6 Even so, the advocacy group Bike Walk RVA counted at least three crashes since October 2025 in which a pedestrian was struck inside a marked crosswalk with the walk signal on.4 Richmond has committed roughly $86 million over three years to Vision Zero.4
Petersburg and the South Crater Road corridor
Petersburg's clearest hotspot is South Crater Road (Route 301). A 2024 VDOT corridor study of the 2.3-mile stretch from Wagner Road to Rives Road counted 384 crashes over the eight years from 2015 through 2022.7 Nine were fatal or caused severe injury, and 138 caused some injury.7 Angle and rear-end collisions made up about 70% of the total, and the crashes clustered at intersections rather than between them.7
For anyone on foot, the design is the problem. VDOT found a sparse, inconsistent sidewalk network with few segments meeting ADA standards, and no accommodations at all for cyclists, with the nearest bikeways (the Appomattox River Trail and the future Fall Line Trail) at least four miles away.7 Four signalized intersections along the route, South Crater Road at Wagner Road, at Crater Circle, at the South Walmart access, and at Rives Road, have no marked crosswalks and no pedestrian signals.7 People still cross there to reach the shopping centers, the Walmart Supercenter, and Southside Regional Medical Center along the strip.7 The bus stops serving the corridor mostly lack shelters, and most have no sidewalk connecting to them.7
Chesterfield, Henrico, and the wider market
The Richmond-Petersburg market runs well past the two cities, and the suburban counties post large totals because they carry the most traffic. Chesterfield County saw 6,191 crashes and 33 deaths in 2024, and Henrico County saw 5,479 crashes and 48 deaths.1
Chesterfield has begun naming its own trouble spots. The county reports more than 175 pedestrian crashes on its roads between 2015 and 2025, roughly 57 of them deadly.8 Its priority corridors read like a list of the area's busiest commercial strips: Route 1 (Jefferson Davis Highway), Midlothian Turnpike, and Route 60.8 A shared-use path and a new pedestrian signal are going in along Route 1 as part of the Fall Line Trail, with completion expected by the end of 2026.8
What this means if you were hit
The pattern across Richmond, Petersburg, and Chesterfield is consistent: wide arterial roads built for car speed, with missing crosswalks and poor lighting. Most pedestrian deaths in Virginia happen in the dark and away from intersections, and that matters, because a missing crosswalk doesn't erase a driver's duty to yield to someone crossing.1 Cyclists face a parallel gap, with 690 bicycle crashes statewide in 2024 and almost no dedicated bike infrastructure on the corridors where the crashes cluster.17
If a driver hit you while you were walking or riding, get the official crash report, note the lighting and whether a marked crosswalk or signal was present, and keep your medical records in one place. Those details often decide who is found at fault. If you're weighing whether to talk to a lawyer, you can start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Virginia Highway Safety Office, 2024 Virginia Traffic Crash Facts. https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/documents/VA-traffic-crash-2024.pdf
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City of Richmond, Vision Zero Action Plan (Safe and Healthy Streets Commission). https://www.rva.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/VisionZero-RichmondActionPlan.pdf
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City of Richmond, Vision Zero program page. https://www.rva.gov/public-works/vision-zero
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WTVR CBS 6, Data shows Richmond not progressing on goal to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2030. https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/data-shows-richmond-falling-short-of-goal-to-eliminate-traffic-deaths-jan-7-2026
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Richmond Magazine, The Year of the Pedestrian. https://richmondmagazine.com/news/news/pedestrian-safety-measures/
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Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, Richmond Police Achieve 32% Reduction in Traffic-Related Fatalities in 2024. https://www.vachiefs.org/news/agency-spotlight-richmond-police-achieve-32-reduction-in-traffic-related-fatalities-in-2024
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Virginia Department of Transportation, S. Crater Road (VA 301) from Wagner Road to Rives Road, Project Pipeline Final Report RI-23-06 (December 2024). https://vaprojectpipeline.virginia.gov/media/va-project-pipeline/documents/ri/RI-23-06-Final-Report_acc12262024_PM.pdf
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Chesterfield County, Virginia, Step into a New Era of Pedestrian Safety in Chesterfield. https://www.chesterfield.gov/m/newsflash/home/detail/7395