Pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots in San Diego

More people on foot and on bikes are dying on San Diego's streets now than a decade ago. In 2023, 37 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed on city streets, up from 25 in 2014, the year before the city committed to Vision Zero. That's a 48% increase over ten years,¹ and it happened while the city was actively rebuilding intersections and adding bike lanes to stop it.²

If you walk or ride in San Diego, the risk isn't spread evenly across the map. It concentrates on a short list of wide, fast arterials, and the same street names keep coming up.

Where the crashes cluster

Across the San Diego region, nearly three people are killed or seriously injured on local roads every day. Between 2018 and 2022, SANDAG counted 4,433 people whose lives were lost or permanently changed in crashes.³ Those crashes aren't random. SANDAG's Safety Focus Network found that just 6% of the region's street mileage accounts for 54% of the fatal and serious-injury crashes.³ Fix a handful of corridors and you reach most of the harm.

The worst of those corridors are easy to name. El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue, the two long commercial streets running east through North Park, City Heights, and the mid-city neighborhoods, show up more than any others. When Circulate San Diego published its "Fatal 15" list of the city's deadliest intersections, three sat on El Cajon Boulevard (at 46th Street, Altadena Avenue, and 60th Street) and three more on University Avenue (at Alabama Street, 44th Street, and College Avenue).⁴

Mira Mesa Boulevard also appears three times, at Black Mountain Road, Aderman Avenue, and Westview Parkway. The rest are scattered across the city: Clairemont Mesa Boulevard at Doliva Drive, Rosecrans and Moore streets near the Midway area, Federal Boulevard at Euclid Avenue in southeastern San Diego, Palm Avenue at 16th Street in the South Bay, and two crossings near downtown, Imperial Avenue at 26th Street and Market Street at 19th Street.⁴ Jason Gordon was killed crossing Market Street at 19th Street on January 19, 2020, one of the deaths that put that intersection on the list.⁴

What the local numbers show

The state tracks this in detail. In the California Office of Traffic Safety's 2022 rankings, 556 pedestrians and 334 bicyclists were killed or injured within the city of San Diego alone.⁵ Countywide the totals were larger: 1,095 pedestrians and 816 bicyclists killed or injured that year.⁶ Against California's other large cities, San Diego ranked 7th out of 15 for both pedestrian and bicyclist victims; six comparable cities did better.⁵

Age matters here. Of the city's pedestrian victims in 2022, 60 were 65 or older and 47 were under 15.⁵ Older adults crossing wide streets on short signal timers are among the most exposed people in any of these hotspots.

Why these roads and not others

There's a pattern to which streets turn deadly. El Cajon Boulevard, University Avenue, Federal Boulevard, and Palm Avenue are all multi-lane arterials: wide and straight, built to move cars quickly through neighborhoods where people are constantly crossing to shops, transit stops, and homes. Speed and turning drivers do most of the damage. SANDAG's own analysis points to unsafe speeds and improper turns as the biggest contributors to the region's fatal and severe crashes.⁷ Circulate San Diego's ten-year review tied the local increase to national forces, bigger vehicles and poor street lighting among them, that quick-builds and crosswalk upgrades haven't offset.²

The region averages more than 250 fatal crashes a year, and pedestrians are involved in roughly a third of them.⁷ For a group that makes up a small share of road users, that's a lopsided toll.

What local agencies are doing about it

The data itself is public. San Diego collision figures come from San Diego Police Department crash reports, published through the city's Vision Zero data portal.⁸ Statewide, every reported crash flows into the California Highway Patrol's SWITRS database, which UC Berkeley's SafeTREC center maps for free through its Transportation Injury Mapping System, so anyone can pull ten years of pedestrian and bicycle collisions for a specific street.⁹

On the ground, the fixes are starting to target the named hotspots. In January 2025, the City of San Diego's Transportation Department identified seven high-crash locations from 2023 data for near-term safety work, including the El Cajon Boulevard corridor from 63rd Street to Choctaw Drive, the Market Street corridor between 26th and 27th streets, Miramar Road at Nobel Drive, and Pacific Highway at Taylor Street.¹⁰ Planned changes include flashing beacons, high-visibility crosswalks, pedestrian countdown timers, and red curbs near corners under California's daylighting law, Assembly Bill 413, which keeps parked cars from hiding people in crosswalks.¹⁰

At the regional level, SANDAG finalized its Vision Zero Action Plan in 2024 and has three bikeway projects totaling more than 11 miles under construction, backed in part by a $400,000 state pedestrian and bicycle safety grant.⁷ Circulate San Diego has pressed the city to fix all 15 of its deadliest intersections with striped crosswalks, countdown signals, and audible prompts, work the group estimated at about $100,000 per intersection, or $1.5 million total.⁴ The city budgeted $33.2 million for Vision Zero in the year after its ten-year review.¹

Whether that's enough is the open question. The tools are proven, but the fatality count has kept climbing.

If you were hit in one of these areas

Call 911 and get a police report started, even if you think you're not badly hurt. Foot and bike injuries often surface hours later. Get the reporting officer's name and the report number, because that record is what feeds SWITRS and any later claim. Photograph the crossing, the signals, and the sightlines. A wide arterial with a faded crosswalk or a car parked up to the corner is evidence about the road, not just about the driver.

If the crash left you with real injuries and you're weighing your options, you can find a personal injury attorney who handles pedestrian and bicycle cases in California. Many of these hotspots have documented design problems on the public record, which can matter to how a case is built.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. ABC 10News San Diego, "New report shows City of San Diego falling short on Vision Zero initiative." https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/new-report-shows-city-of-san-diego-falling-short-on-vision-zero-initiative

2. KPBS Public Media, "Report suggests bigger vehicles, slow construction timelines led to San Diego's 'Vision Zero' failure" (Nov. 13, 2024). https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2024/11/13/report-suggests-bigger-vehicles-slow-construction-timelines-led-to-san-diegos-vision-zero-failure

3. SANDAG, "Vision Zero" (regional initiative page). https://www.sandag.org/projects-and-programs/regional-initiatives/vision-zero

4. NBC 7 San Diego, "The 'Fatal 15': Public safety advocates ID San Diego's most dangerous intersections" (May 13, 2024). https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/the-fatal-15-public-safety-advocates-id-san-diegos-most-dangerous-intersections/3513483/

5. California Office of Traffic Safety, "San Diego 2022" OTS Crash Rankings. https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/san-diego-2022

6. California Office of Traffic Safety, "San Diego County 2022" OTS Crash Rankings. https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/san-diego-county-2022/

7. SANDAG, "SANDAG Advances Safer Streets Initiatives for the San Diego Region" (news release). https://www.sandag.org/news/news-release-sandag-advances-safer-streets-initiatives-for-the-san-diego-region

8. City of San Diego, "Vision Zero - Data & Information." https://www.sandiego.gov/vision-zero/data-information

9. UC Berkeley SafeTREC, Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS). https://tims.berkeley.edu/

10. Inside San Diego, "Safety Improvements Identified for High Crash City Locations" (Jan. 13, 2025). https://www.insidesandiego.org/safety-improvements-identified-high-crash-city-locations