If you were just in a crash near Buffalo, the direction the other vehicle came from probably matters more than its make or model. A rear-end tap and a driver's-side hit at the same speed put very different forces through the people inside. A few kinds of collision send far more people to the hospital than their share of crashes would predict, and in Erie County they tend to repeat on the same roads.
Traffic deaths here actually fell last year. Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook counted 12 motor-vehicle occupant deaths and 4 motorcyclist deaths in 2025, down from 23 and 13 in 2024, and below the roughly 22 and 7 the county had averaged over the previous decade.1 Statewide, the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee reported 681 fatalities through October 2025 against 766 for the same stretch of 2024, an 11 percent drop, with upstate deaths down from 490 to 420.2 The trend is good. Where and how the worst crashes happen has not changed.
The three crash types that hurt people most
Most crashes are frontal or rear-end, and most people walk away. The disproportionate harm comes from three angles. In 2024, side impacts caused 22 percent of passenger-vehicle occupant deaths and rollovers were involved in 28 percent, even though a car is far more likely to be hit head-on in the ordinary sense (frontal impacts, 59 percent), according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.3 Angle (T-bone) crashes cluster at intersections, where the Federal Highway Administration attributes about a quarter of the nation's traffic deaths and roughly half of its injuries.4 Rollovers are mostly single-vehicle, run-off-road events.5 And a true head-on on a high-speed divided road usually means a wrong-way driver. Buffalo has clear hotspots for all three.
Head-on and wrong-way wrecks on the expressways
On a divided highway, a real head-on almost always means someone is driving against traffic. The New York State Thruway (I-90) through Erie County has produced several. In September 2025, a driver heading west in the eastbound lanes near mile marker 413.7 in Lancaster struck an oncoming car around 1 a.m. Both drivers, one from Buffalo and one from Arizona, were killed, and the Erie County Medical Examiner's Office pronounced them at the scene.6 A few years earlier on I-190, an 87-year-old going the wrong way caused a head-on that killed three people from Michigan.7
Not every deadly Thruway crash is a wrong-way driver. On July 19, 2026, State Police Troop T investigated a fatal wreck on I-90 eastbound in Evans after a Buffalo driver's car drifted out of the passing lane into a tractor-trailer; the driver died at the scene.8 A lane departure on a 65 mph highway leaves almost no time to correct, which is why it so often ends in a head-on, a sideswipe with a truck, or a rollover.
T-bone crashes at Buffalo's busy intersections
Off the expressways, the danger changes shape. On surface arterials like Bailey Avenue, Main Street, and Transit Road, the recurring wreck is the angle crash: one driver runs a light or turns across traffic and hits another on the door. These land hard because the door is thin. Side impacts account for more than a fifth of occupant deaths even though far less car sits between you and the other bumper.3
Transit Road (Route 78) shows why. NYSDOT has tied the corridor's crash and congestion problems to the number of commercial driveways feeding on and off the road, and the department has run several projects meant to cut conflicts along it.9 Every driveway and signal is another place where paths cross at right angles. Left turns and red-light running do most of the damage at signalized intersections, and those are exactly the movements that produce T-bones.
Rollovers, ramps, and the roads that tip cars
Rollovers are rare and deadly. They are overwhelmingly single-vehicle crashes in which a car runs off the road, trips on a curb or shoulder, and flips.5 Two Buffalo roads show how it happens.
The Scajaquada Expressway (Route 198) runs straight through Delaware Park. In May 2015, a driver who fell asleep left the road and struck a family, killing a three-year-old boy. Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the speed limit cut from 50 to 30 mph within days, and it has stayed there.10 A run-off-road crash at 50 through a park is a very different event than one at 30.
The Buffalo Skyway (Route 5) is the other. The 5,800-foot viaduct carries Route 5 about 110 feet over the Buffalo River, with roughly 100 feet of clearance for ships.11 That height catches wind. NYSDOT bans tractor-trailers and box trucks on the Skyway between I-190 and Ridge Road during high wind warnings and closes the bridge outright in extreme gusts, after repeated crashes and truck rollovers on the deck.12 The tight ramp curves where the Skyway, I-190, and Route 5 meet add their own rollover risk for anyone taking them too fast.
What Buffalo and New York are doing about it
The Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council is building a Roadway Safety Action Plan, its "RACE" plan, for Erie and Niagara counties. It works through crash data to rank the corridors and intersections with the most fatal and serious-injury crashes and to line up federal money for fixes, in step with the state's Vision Zero goal.13 NYSDOT's Region 5 has projects on all three problem roads: a plan to cap part of the Route 33 Kensington Expressway with a tunnel,14 a long-running study to remove the Skyway and replace it with a lower connector,11 and the permanent 30 mph limit on the 198.10 The statewide fatality drop suggests some of this is working.2
If you were hurt in one of these crashes
A rollover or a T-bone usually means real injuries and, often, a fight over who is at fault. Get the police report number before you leave the scene if you can, photograph the vehicles and the intersection or lane, and get checked out even if you feel fine, because side-impact and rollover injuries can stay quiet for a day or two. If the claim turns out bigger than you want to handle alone, you can compare options through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook, reported in "Erie County coroner notes drops in fatal ODs, traffic deaths in 2025." https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/erie-county-coroner-notes-drops-091352391.html
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New York State Governor's Traffic Safety Committee and DMV, "New York State Sees Sharp Drop in Fatal Crashes." https://dmv.ny.gov/news/new-york-state-sees-sharp-drop-in-fatal-crashes
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Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, "Fatality Facts 2024: Passenger vehicle occupants." https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/detail/passenger-vehicle-occupants
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Federal Highway Administration, "About Intersection Safety." https://highways.dot.gov/safety/intersection-safety/about
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National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "Passenger Vehicles: 2023 Data," Traffic Safety Facts. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813723.pdf
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WIVB News 4, "2 drivers killed in wrong-way crash on I-90 in Lancaster." https://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/erie-county/lancaster/2-drivers-killed-in-wrong-way-incident-on-i-90-in-lancaster/
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CBS News Detroit, "3 from Michigan killed in crash near Buffalo." https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/3-from-michigan-killed-in-crash-near-buffalo
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New York State Police, "Crash on Thruway results in fatality for Buffalo man." https://troopers.ny.gov/news/crash-thruway-results-fatality-buffalo-man
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NYSDOT Region 5, "NY Route 78 (Transit Road) project." https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region5/projects/archived-projects/route-78-transit-road
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WBFO, "Following tragedy, Cuomo orders Scajaquada speed limit reduced to 30 mph." https://www.wbfo.org/local/2015-05-31/following-tragedy-cuomo-orders-scajaquada-speed-limit-reduced-to-30-mph
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NYSDOT Region 5, "New York State Route 5 Buffalo Skyway Management Study, Executive Summary." https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region5/repository/FinalReport-ExecutiveSummary10-20-08.pdf
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WGRZ, "Tractor-trailers, box trucks banned on Buffalo Skyway due to high wind warning." https://www.wgrz.com/article/traffic/tractor-trailers-box-trucks-banned-on-buffalo-skyway-due-to-high-wind-warning/71-4a945f12-7b3d-4a07-ab4c-a9f49f5fc728
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Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council, "Roadway All-User Crash Elimination Plan (RACE) / Safety Action Plan." https://www.gbnrtc.org/safetyactionplan
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NYSDOT, "NYS Route 33, Kensington Expressway Project." https://kensingtonexpressway.dot.ny.gov/