Rollover, T-bone, and head-on hotspots across Hampton Roads

Most crashes in Hampton Roads are minor. Somebody follows too closely, taps the car ahead, and everyone drives away. The wrecks that send people to Sentara Norfolk General or to the medical examiner are a different set: a car that leaves the road and rolls, a broadside hit in the middle of an intersection, or two vehicles meeting head-on. Those three types are uncommon next to everyday rear-enders, and they still account for a lopsided share of the region's deaths.

The Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) analyzed five years of Virginia DMV crash data, 2017 through 2021, for its regional safety study. Rear-end crashes were the most common type at 35.2% of all crashes, followed by angle (T-bone) crashes at 28.3% and run-off-road crashes into fixed objects at 14.4%.¹ The fatal picture flips. Run-off-road crashes into a fixed object, only 14.4% of all crashes, were the single most common fatal crash type at 30.4% of deaths. Angle crashes were 24.6% of fatal crashes, and head-on crashes, a mere 2.4% of all crashes, rose to 6.9% of fatal ones.¹

Put simply, the wrecks people fear most are the ones most likely to show up in the death count.

T-bone crashes and the intersection problem

An angle crash usually means someone ran a red light, rolled a stop sign, or turned across oncoming traffic. HRTPO found that failing to yield the right-of-way was behind 15.2% of the region's crashes.¹ These cluster at a handful of well-known corners.

Of the 1,013 intersections HRTPO studied, Mercury Boulevard at Power Plant Parkway/Todds Lane in Hampton had the most crashes of any in the region: 267 over five years, about 53 a year.¹ It also tied for the most fatal and serious-injury crashes, 17, and ranks first on VDOT's list of intersections with the highest potential for safety improvement.¹ Mercury Boulevard is a repeat offender, with several of its intersections, including Coliseum Drive (226 crashes), among the region's worst.¹

On the Peninsula, Jefferson Avenue is the other magnet. Its intersections with J. Clyde Morris Boulevard (195 crashes) and Oyster Point Road (178) rank near the top,¹ and Oyster Point now carries photo red-light enforcement.² When WAVY's WreckWatch pulled the 2024 numbers from HRTPO, Mercury at Power Plant led again with 54 crashes, followed by Armistead Avenue at LaSalle Avenue with 35 and Jefferson at Oyster Point with 34.²

Raw counts favor busy suburban corners. Crash rate, which adjusts for how many vehicles pass through, tells you where your odds are worst per trip. By that measure Roanoke Avenue at 48th Street in Newport News was the region's most dangerous intersection, at 488.9 crashes per 100 million entering vehicles.¹

Run-off-road wrecks and rollovers

Rollovers rarely involve a second car. A driver drifts onto a shoulder, overcorrects, catches a curb or a ditch, and the vehicle trips and rolls. Nationally, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that a rollover was involved in 28% of passenger-vehicle occupant deaths, and within single-vehicle crashes that share climbs to 47%.³ Taller vehicles fare worse, with rollover making up a larger slice of pickup and SUV occupant deaths than car deaths.³

The regional data lines up. Single-vehicle crashes were only 21% of all Hampton Roads crashes from 2017 to 2021, yet nearly half of the region's fatal crashes involved a single vehicle.¹ The driver action behind the most fatal crashes was failure to maintain control of the vehicle, ahead of speeding and impairment: 11.5% of all crashes but 30.3% of the fatal ones.¹ The same gap shows statewide, where single-vehicle crashes were 29.1% of all crashes in 2024 but 54.8% of the deaths.⁴

Speed magnifies the danger. Speeding was tied to just 1.9% of regional crashes but 12.2% of the fatal ones.¹ High speed plus a single vehicle leaving the road is a freeway problem. VDOT ranks the stretch of Interstate 64 from Northampton Boulevard to I-264 in Norfolk as the freeway segment with the most potential for safety improvement, ahead of I-64 through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and I-664 across the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel.¹ That I-64 corridor is now in the middle of the HRBT Expansion, the largest highway construction project in Virginia's history, which is widening nearly 10 miles of interstate and is due to finish in 2027.⁵ Work zones add lane shifts and stopped traffic to a road that is already crowded.

Head-on crashes, rare but deadly

Head-on crashes are the clearest case of a low-frequency, high-lethality type. They were 2.4% of Hampton Roads crashes but 6.9% of the fatal ones.¹ Statewide, driving left of center while not passing was recorded as the action of 37 drivers killed in 2024.⁴

They happen where a moment of inattention crosses a center line: two-lane roads without a median, and the rural corridors on the edges of the market. Copeland Road at Manning Road in Suffolk had the region's highest rate of fatal and serious-injury crashes, 66.74 per 100 million entering vehicles, against a regional average of 3.29.¹ Deep Creek Boulevard at Lincoln Street in Portsmouth was second, and Route 17 at Davenport Road in Gloucester County also ranked among the worst.¹ None of these are the busiest intersections in Hampton Roads. They are the ones where the crashes that do occur tend to be catastrophic.

Where the crashes concentrate

The raw toll is heaviest in the two biggest cities. In 2024 the Virginia DMV recorded 5,272 crashes and 24 deaths in Virginia Beach and 4,785 crashes and 20 deaths in Norfolk, both among the highest counts of any locality in the state.⁴ Newport News (3,463 crashes, 19 deaths), Hampton (3,590 crashes, 13 deaths), Chesapeake (2,459 crashes, 19 deaths), Suffolk (1,707 crashes, 14 deaths), and Portsmouth (1,078 crashes, 6 deaths) round out the region.⁴ HRTPO counted 24,712 crashes and 162 deaths region-wide in 2022, about one crash every 21 minutes.⁶

Virginia State Police and the city police departments in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, and Hampton investigate these crashes; VDOT and HRTPO decide which corners get a new signal phase or a wider shoulder. The Federal Highway Administration estimates driver error is a factor in about 90% of all crashes,¹ which is another way of saying most of these were preventable.

If one of these crashes happens to you

Rollovers, T-bones, and head-ons tend to cause the injuries that need careful documentation, such as concussions, spinal injuries, and fractures. Get the crash report number from the responding officer, photograph the intersection or the roadway, and see a doctor even if you feel fine, because these injuries can surface days later. Virginia uses a fault-based system with a strict contributory-negligence rule, so how the crash is documented can decide the outcome. If you are weighing a claim, you can compare local options through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, Hampton Roads Regional Safety Study (2023 Update). https://www.hrtpo.org/DocumentCenter/View/8861/T24-02-Hampton-Roads-Regional-Safety-Study-2023-PDF

2. WAVY-TV, WreckWatch: Top 5 crash-prone intersections in Hampton Roads (2024). https://www.wavy.com/news/investigative/wreck-watch-explores-the-five-worst-intersections-for-crashes-in-hampton-roads/

3. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Fatality Facts: Passenger vehicle occupants. https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/detail/passenger-vehicle-occupants

4. 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

5. Virginia Department of Transportation, I-64 Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion. https://hrbtexpansion.vdot.virginia.gov/

6. Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, Roadway Safety. https://hrtpo.org/444/Roadway-Safety