Pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area

If you walk or bike in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto media market, you probably already have a mental list of streets you cross carefully, or avoid. Wide arterials built for speed and long gaps between marked crosswalks have turned a handful of specific corridors into the same streets that keep showing up in crash reports year after year.

The regional numbers back up that instinct. Smart Growth America's 2026 "Dangerous by Design" report ties the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom and Stockton-Lodi metro areas for 19th place among the 101 largest U.S. metro areas ranked for pedestrian danger, both posting an average annual pedestrian fatality rate of 3.21 per 100,000 residents.¹ Sacramento's trend line is moving the wrong way: the metro logged 389 pedestrian deaths from 2020 through 2024, up from 284 in the previous five-year stretch.¹ Stockton-Lodi's own five-year count, 128 pedestrian deaths, is essentially flat compared with the period before.¹

Sacramento's worst street is Stockton Boulevard

Ask Sacramento's traffic engineers which road causes the most damage, and they point to Stockton Boulevard.

Four pedestrians were killed along the corridor in a six-month stretch ending in early 2026, pushing the city and Sacramento Regional Transit to fast-track the Stockton Boulevard Safety and Transit Enhancement Project.² The corridor stretches from East Sacramento through Elk Grove, but the city's own High Injury Network flags three segments as the worst of the worst: Broadway between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Stockton Boulevard, Stockton Boulevard between Broadway and 13th Street, and Stockton Boulevard between 65th Street and 37th Avenue.³ The intersection of Stockton Boulevard and Fruitridge Road, which sits on the city-county line, recorded seven bicycle crashes between 2014 and 2018 alone.⁴

The city has roughly $5 million on hand for planning and design work on the project, which calls for wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes, upgraded lighting, more than a dozen new crosswalks, and the removal of two of the corridor's four travel lanes to make room for a dedicated bus lane.² Councilmember Eric Guerra put it plainly: "We have to change the design so that it's safer for pedestrians who are trying to cross the street, but for drivers as well."²

Stockton Boulevard is the sharpest example of a citywide problem. The Office of Traffic Safety's 2023 rankings placed Sacramento 4th-worst out of 15 comparably sized California cities for pedestrian victims, with 297 people killed or injured, and 3rd-worst for bicyclist victims, with 237 killed or injured.⁵ The toll got bad enough that in late 2024, Vice Mayor Caity Maple and then-Mayor Darrell Steinberg pushed for a local state of emergency over traffic deaths, six days after the city recorded its 31st traffic fatality of the year.⁶ Sacramento's Vision Zero Action Plan, first adopted in 2018, is being updated with a spring 2026 completion target, backed by a public crash data dashboard covering 2013 through 2023.⁷ Two more corridor plans, for Norwood Avenue between Main Avenue and Arcade Creek and for Howe Avenue between Fair Oaks Boulevard and the Power Inn light rail station, cleared City Council in February 2026 with a combined estimated cost near $140 million.⁸

Stockton's crashes cluster on the edges and near MLK Boulevard

Stockton's raw numbers are smaller than Sacramento's mostly because the city is smaller. OTS ranked Stockton 6th-worst out of 15 peer cities for pedestrian victims in 2023, with 129 killed or injured, and 5th-worst for bicyclist victims, with 88 killed or injured.⁹ The city is now building its own Vision Zero Action Plan under a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, with more than 150 public comments logged through an interactive map between January and July 2025 and a list of priority corridors due later this year.¹⁰

While that plan takes shape, the crashes keep coming in a pattern that traces a rough map of the city's danger zones. A bicyclist was killed and two dogs died in a hit-and-run on Eight Mile Road east of Interstate 5 on June 28, 2026, and the California Highway Patrol is still looking for a silver or light gray Ford Explorer with front-end damage.¹¹ The next afternoon, a 32-year-old bicyclist was attacked in a road-rage incident at Alpine Avenue and West Lane.¹¹ Another bicyclist was killed on Harlan Road in late February 2026.¹² And in January 2026, Stockton City Manager Johnny Ford was involved in a fatal collision with a pedestrian on El Dorado Street near Poplar Street; police called it "a tragic, unforeseeable accident with no criminal liability" after finding no signs of impairment.¹³

McHenry Avenue keeps producing the same crash in Modesto

If Stockton Boulevard is Sacramento's problem street, McHenry Avenue is Modesto's. Within a two-month span, the corridor produced fatal pedestrian strikes at two different points: a 48-year-old woman was killed crossing at Bowen Avenue, inside the crosswalk, in September 2023,¹⁴ and a man was struck and killed at a midblock crossing between Sylvan and Woodrow avenues two months later, the fourth pedestrian death in Modesto that month alone.¹⁵ After that second death, Sgt. Pat Kimes acknowledged the department's frustration with a road that won't stop killing people: "We're really trying to up our shifts where we can go out and enforce pedestrian stuff, educate, change behavior by citations, but it just keeps happening."¹⁵

The city's response includes a HAWK pedestrian beacon activated in April 2025 at I and H streets along 16th Street downtown, near the weekly farmers market, at a cost of $400,000 to $500,000.¹⁶ Countywide, Stanislaus County recorded 18 pedestrian deaths and 5 bicyclist deaths in 2022, along with 170 injured pedestrians and 126 injured cyclists, a toll that pushed the county to seek new state grant funding for enforcement and education.¹⁷ OTS's 2023 rankings placed Modesto 3rd-worst out of 62 comparably sized California cities for pedestrian victims, with 119 killed or injured, and 10th-worst for bicyclist victims, with 73 killed or injured.¹⁸

The pattern across all three cities

None of these corridors are a secret. City engineers, transit planners, and police in Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto can all name their worst street without checking notes, and each city has a plan on paper to fix it. Those plans move on a timeline of years: Sacramento's STEP project is still in the funding stage, Stockton's Vision Zero corridors haven't been named publicly yet, and Modesto's fixes have so far been limited to single intersections. The streets that hurt people today are largely the same streets that will carry that risk again next year.

If you or someone you love is hit while walking or biking anywhere in this region, get medical care first, and get a copy of the police report once one exists. If a driver caused the crash, a personal injury attorney can help you deal with the insurance side while you focus on recovering. You can find one through thatcarhitme.com's legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

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

2. CBS News Sacramento, "Sacramento moves to redesign Stockton Boulevard corridor after multiple pedestrian deaths," https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/sacramento-stockton-boulevard-changes-to-stop-deadly-crashes/

3. Getting Around Sacramento, "Stockton Boulevard Safety and Transit Enhancement Project (STEP)," https://gettingaroundsac.blog/2026/02/21/stockton-boulevard-safety-and-transit-enhancement-project-step/

4. Getting Around Sacramento, "Sac Vision Zero Top 5 Corridors and top intersections," https://gettingaroundsac.blog/2021/02/17/sac-vision-zero-top-5-corridors-and-top-intersections/

5. California Office of Traffic Safety, "Sacramento 2023 Rankings," https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/sacramento-2023/

6. Streetsblog California, "Sacramento City Council May Declare Emergency Over Traffic Safety," https://cal.streetsblog.org/2024/09/18/sacramento-city-council-may-declare-emergency-over-traffic-safety

7. Sacramento City Express, "Sacramento begins Vision Zero update, launches crash data dashboard," https://sacramentocityexpress.com/2025/07/16/sacramento-begins-vision-zero-update-launches-crash-data-dashboard/

8. Sacramento City Express, "City advances Vision Zero plans for two high-injury corridors," https://sacramentocityexpress.com/2026/02/27/city-advances-vision-zero-plans-for-two-high-injury-corridors/

9. California Office of Traffic Safety, "Stockton 2023 Rankings," https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/stockton-2023/

10. City of Stockton, "Vision Zero Action Plan," https://www.stocktonca.gov/services/public_works/projects___studies/vision_zero.php

11. Stocktonia, "Road-rage attack, hit-and-run killing highlight bicycle dangers in Stockton," https://stocktonia.org/news/public-safety/2026/06/30/stockton-road-rage-attack-hit-and-run-killing-bicycle-dangers/

12. ABC10, "Bicyclist killed in early morning crash in Stockton," https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/stockton/bicyclist-killed-harlan-road-stockton-feb-27-2026/103-1fd34ad0-a343-4019-8e7e-53c862d19dbb

13. CBS News Sacramento, "Stockton city manager involved in fatal collision, found not to be at fault, police say," https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/stockton-fatal-pedestrian-collision-city-manager-johnny-ford-involved-police-say/

14. CBS News Sacramento, "Questions remain after female pedestrian hit and killed in Modesto," https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/questions-remain-after-female-pedestrian-hit-and-killed-in-modesto

15. AOL News (Modesto Bee), "Another pedestrian dies, days after Modesto police announce grant for new safety efforts," https://www.aol.com/another-pedestrian-dies-days-modesto-170616885.html

16. CBS News Sacramento, "Modesto HAWK beacon crosswalks improve pedestrian safety," https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/modesto-hawk-beacon-crosswalks-improve-pedestrian-safety

17. Stanislaus County Health Services Agency, "OTS Grant Awarded for Bicycle, Pedestrian Safety and Child Safety Seat," https://www.schsa.org/news-room/2024/24-07-ots-grant-bicycle-pedestrian-child-safety.shtm

18. California Office of Traffic Safety, "Modesto 2023 Rankings," https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/modesto-2023/