Pedestrian and bicycle crash hotspots in the St. Louis area

2024 was the deadliest year on record for pedestrians in the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County combined, with 59 people killed while walking, a toll driven largely by a 187% jump in the city alone.¹ The numbers eased in 2025: Trailnet, the regional walking and biking advocacy group that has tracked local crash data since 2020, counted 37 combined pedestrian deaths in the city and county last year, 22 fewer than 2024.² Cyclist deaths moved the opposite way, climbing from zero across the region in 2024 to five in 2025.² Across several years of Trailnet's reports, one pattern holds steady: a short list of wide, fast arterial roads accounts for a wildly disproportionate share of the deaths and serious injuries.

Where crashes cluster in the city

Gravois Avenue, also signed as Missouri Route 30, is the constant. Trailnet's newest count found 23 crashes, 19 injuries and 4 deaths on Gravois in 2025, more fatalities than the next four corridors combined.³ Grand Boulevard came in second with 22 crashes and one death, followed by Kingshighway Boulevard (11 crashes, one death), the combined Route 100/Manchester Avenue/Chouteau Boulevard corridor (10 crashes, one death), and Broadway (8 crashes, no deaths).³ The intersection of South Grand Boulevard and Forest Park Avenue carries its own grim history: a single 2023 crash there killed four people and injured four more.⁴ MoDOT and the city are now studying a full redesign of Gravois for 2029.³

St. Louis County's most dangerous corridors

St. Louis County saw nearly 400 pedestrians and cyclists struck by drivers in 2025.³ Lindbergh Boulevard, also known as U.S. 61/67, topped the county's list with 22 crashes and one death, trailed by Chambers Road (11 crashes, one death), Manchester Road/Missouri Route 100 (10 crashes, one death), New Halls Ferry Road (9 crashes, three deaths) and West Florissant Road (9 crashes, one death).³ West Florissant has already drawn major state investment: a $32 million MoDOT rebuild between Solway and Stein roads targets the corridor's crossings and lane layout.¹

Why these roads keep hurting people

Speed is the single biggest variable. Regionwide, crashes on 35-to-45-mph arterial roads are 8.6 times more likely to be fatal than crashes on streets posted 25 mph or under.³ In the city, 56% of all pedestrian and cyclist deaths happened on streets posted 35 mph.³ Arterial roads, which typically carry three to six lanes, produced 85% of the city's pedestrian deaths and 78% of the county's, even though arterials carry only about half of all crashes in each place.³ The most dangerous stretch of pavement usually isn't the intersection itself: 61% of all vulnerable-road-user deaths regionwide happened 51 to 200 feet past an intersection, where drivers are still accelerating out of a turn or racing a signal and marked crossings are rare, versus just 31% of crashes overall.³ St. Louis's population fell by roughly 7% over the six years Trailnet studied, which means the raw crash totals likely understate how much more dangerous these streets have gotten per resident.⁵

The risk isn't spread evenly. Trailnet found that the city census tracts with the most pedestrian and cyclist crashes are 3.6 times more likely to include households with no vehicle access, and nine times more likely to have residents who depend on public transit, a pattern the group ties to decades of underinvestment in sidewalks and crossings in lower-income, majority-Black neighborhoods.⁴ That local pattern lines up with MoDOT's statewide numbers: Black Missourians are 3.2 times more likely to be killed in a vulnerable-road-user crash than white residents.⁶

St. Louis is Missouri's worst region for this

By MoDOT's own numbers, St. Louis is the worst region in Missouri for these crashes. Its mapping shows St. Louis City and County as the densest cluster of Higher Injury Network roads anywhere in the state, a network that covers only 788 of Missouri's roughly 135,000 miles of roadway but carries more than half of all fatal and serious-injury crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.⁶ Trailnet's review of that same assessment found that more than half of an additional 100 miles of state road slated for targeted safety upgrades sit within the St. Louis District.³ Statewide, Missouri recorded 1,144 fatal and 3,445 serious-injury vulnerable-road-user crashes from 2015 through 2023, a toll MoDOT estimates cost the state $17.8 billion.⁶ Missouri's 148 pedestrian deaths in 2024 were a state record and a 16% jump from 2023, even as overall roadway deaths fell for a second straight year.⁷

What's changing on the ground

The city is backing its plan with real money. St. Louis committed $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to safety work on roughly 30 miles of its highest-crash arterials, including Goodfellow Boulevard, Union Boulevard, Kingshighway Boulevard, Grand Boulevard and Broadway, with construction running through 2026.³ The Kingshighway project alone covers more than nine miles between Florissant Avenue and Gravois Avenue on a road that has logged 95 vulnerable-road-user crashes and three deaths since 2020.³ St. Louis County drew federal funding for 95 separate bicycle and pedestrian projects in 2025, from sidewalk and ADA ramp repairs to new signals and bike infrastructure.³ Much of this work is coordinated through East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the region's federally designated planning agency, which works with MoDOT and both St. Louis City and County on bicycle and pedestrian planning across the bi-state area.⁸ In 2024, East-West Gateway and MoDOT's St. Louis District finished the Blueprint for Arterials, a design framework now guiding construction on Missouri Route 231, Route 100 and Route D.³ The city also adopted its first full Transportation and Mobility Plan since 1948, setting a goal of cutting traffic deaths and serious injuries in half by 2050.³

If you're hurt on one of these roads

None of that rebuilds a crossing overnight, and in the meantime the same corridors, Gravois, Grand, Kingshighway, Lindbergh, Manchester, New Halls Ferry and West Florissant, keep producing crashes. If you or someone you love was hit while walking or biking on one of them, an attorney who handles pedestrian and bicycle cases can help you deal with insurance companies and medical bills while you recover. You can find one through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. St. Louis Public Radio, "Report shows St. Louis region sees its deadliest year for pedestrians," https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2025-05-01/report-shows-st-louis-region-sees-its-deadliest-year-for-pedestrians

2. St. Louis Public Radio, "St. Louis pedestrian deaths down, cyclist deaths rose in 2025," https://www.stlpr.org/news-briefs/2026-06-23/safer-streets-st-louis-walking-biking-deaths

3. Trailnet, "The State of Our Streets 2025," https://trailnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Trailnet-State-of-Our-Streets-2025.pdf

4. St. Louis Public Radio, "Trailnet's report shows St. Louis communities of color are impacted the most by traffic violence," https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-06-26/trailnets-report-st-louis-communities-color-impacted-most-traffic-violence

5. Mound City Messenger, "City Data Shows Limited Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety Progress," https://moundcitymessenger.com/2026/07/09/city-data-shows-limited-pedestrian-and-cyclist-safety-progress/

6. Missouri Department of Transportation, "Missouri Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment" (November 2025), https://www.jeffersoncitymo.gov/MoDOT_Statewide_VRU_Safety_Assessment_PDFUA.pdf

7. Missouri Department of Transportation, "Missouri Roadway Fatalities Continue to Trend Downward," https://www.modot.org/node/62240

8. East-West Gateway Council of Governments, "Bicycle and Pedestrian," https://www.ewgateway.org/transportation-planning/bicycle-pedestrian/