Rollover, T-bone and head-on hotspots in Portland

T-bone, head-on and rollover crashes cause most of Portland's worst injuries, and they cluster on specific roads. Here's where they happen, what the ODOT and PBOT numbers show, and the Oregon reporting rule you can't afford to miss.

ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial
Apr 22, 2026
6 min read

Rollover, t-bone and head-on hotspots in Portland

If you were just in a crash here, the kind of collision usually tells you more about your injuries than the speedometer does. A rear-end bump at a red light is one thing. A driver blowing the light and hitting your door is another. Three collision types do most of the serious harm on Portland roads: T-bone (angle) crashes at intersections, head-on collisions, and rollovers.

In 2024, 58 people died in traffic crashes on Portland streets, down from 69 the year before.1 That year, 71 percent of those deaths happened on the High Crash Network, the 30 streets and 30 intersections that make up about 8 percent of the city's street miles but have accounted for an average of 67 percent of traffic deaths from 2020 through 2024.12 The worst crash types cluster in predictable places, and knowing them is the difference between generic advice and a real map of the risk.

T-bone crashes and the city's worst intersections

A T-bone, which crash reports call an angle or right-angle collision, happens when the front of one vehicle strikes the side of another. Almost nothing sits between the striking car and the person in the door. In 2024 the Oregon Department of Transportation logged 4,901 angle crashes across the state, about one in ten of all reported crashes; they injured 5,072 people and killed 24, and the overwhelming majority happened at intersections.3

In Portland, that risk sits on a short list of corners. The city's five highest-crash intersections are SE Foster Road at the I-205 ramp, NE Halsey Street at 122nd Avenue, NE Glisan Street at the I-84 ramp, N Vancouver Avenue at Weidler Street, and NE Glisan Street at 82nd Avenue.2

82nd Avenue is the worst single street for this. Six of Portland's 30 highest-crash intersections sit on it, at NE Fremont, NE Glisan, E Burnside, SE Division, SE Powell, and SE Flavel.4 Between January 2015 and December 2019, 82nd Avenue alone recorded 142 serious crashes and nine deaths.4 SE Powell Boulevard, SE Division Street, and the 122nd Avenue corridor run the same way: wide arterials with long blocks, where a driver beating a yellow meets someone turning across traffic.

Head-on crashes, rare but the deadliest

Head-on collisions barely register in the totals. Of 48,414 reported crashes in Oregon in 2024, only 643 were head-on, a little over one percent.3 They killed 87 people, close to one in six of the state's 536 traffic deaths that year.3 When two vehicles meet front to front, the impact speed is both speeds added together, and the energy has nowhere to go but into the passenger compartments.

These crashes happen where nothing separates oncoming traffic: older undivided arterials, two-lane highways, and freeway ramps taken the wrong way. Several High Crash Network roads match that profile, among them SW Barbur Boulevard and N/NE Marine Drive, which run for miles with no center barrier.2 ODOT rebuilt one of the worst points on Barbur, the crossroads at SW Capitol Highway and SW Taylors Ferry Road, after tallying at least 161 crashes there since 2008 and placing it in the top 10 percent of the state's Safety Priority Index.5 The $3 million project, finished in 2022, took out a conflicting left turn onto Barbur and the I-5 on-ramp instead of adding a signal.5

Rollovers, run-off-road, and the curves

ODOT's single deadliest crash category isn't a two-car collision at all. In 2024 the state recorded 8,845 crashes where a vehicle left the road and struck a fixed or other object such as a tree, pole, or guardrail, and those crashes killed 185 people, more than head-on and angle crashes combined.3 Many run-off-road crashes end with the vehicle on its roof. Nationally, rollovers caused 28 percent of all passenger-vehicle occupant deaths in 2024, with 6,250 people killed, and the toll runs highest in single-vehicle crashes, where 47 percent of occupant deaths involved a rollover against 13 percent in multi-vehicle crashes.6 Taller vehicles tip more easily: rollovers accounted for 33 percent of SUV occupant deaths and 38 percent of pickup deaths, compared with 20 percent for cars.6

Speed and geometry make it local. Nearly half of Portland's 2024 traffic deaths, 48 percent, involved speeding.1 The plainest example of the geometry is the curved Terwilliger section of I-5 through SW Portland, where the freeway bends through a run of tight curves and crashes block the lanes often enough to be a fixture of the local traffic report.7 Run-off-road and rollover wrecks also turn up on the higher-speed rural and riverfront roads at the city's edges, where one mistake ends in a ditch rather than another bumper.

What to do after one of these crashes

Oregon has a reporting rule that catches a lot of drivers off guard. You must file an Oregon Traffic Collision and Insurance Report, DMV form 735-32, within 72 hours of a crash if anyone was hurt or killed, if your own vehicle took more than $2,500 in damage, or if any vehicle was damaged over $2,500 and towed from the scene.8 You have to file even when police wrote their own report at the scene, and if you skip it, the DMV is required by law to suspend your license.8

If anyone is injured, call 911 so the Portland Police Bureau or the responding agency documents the scene, and get the crash report number. Photograph the vehicles, the intersection, the signals, and any skid or gouge marks before anything is moved. Angle and head-on cases often come down to who had the green light and where the impact landed, and that evidence disappears fast.

Serious T-bone, head-on, and rollover crashes tend to bring lasting injuries and arguments over fault, and the reporting and insurance steps pile up while you're still recovering. If you're deciding whether to talk to a lawyer, you can compare options through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

  1. Portland Bureau of Transportation, News Release: PBOT releases 2024 deadly crash report. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2025/3/6/news-release-pbot-releases-2024-deadly-crash-report-latest-annual

  2. Portland Bureau of Transportation, High Crash Network streets and intersections. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/high-crash-network-streets-and-intersections

  3. Oregon Department of Transportation, Statewide Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes by Collision Type, 2015-2024 (CDS150). https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/Data/Documents/Crashes_Statewide.pdf

  4. Portland Bureau of Transportation, What's 82nd Avenue like today? https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/82nd-avenue/building-better-82nd-avenue-online-open-house/3-whats-82nd

  5. Oregon Department of Transportation, Barbur Crossroads Safety Project. https://www.oregon.gov/odot/projects/pages/project-details.aspx?project=20438

  6. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Fatality Facts 2024: Passenger vehicle occupants. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/passenger-vehicle-occupants

  7. KGW-TV, I-5 northbound Portland lanes blocked by crash near Terwilliger. https://www.kgw.com/article/traffic/i-5-northbound-portland-lanes-blocked-crash-traffic/283-d66e9fe6-e2f5-4322-a6b3-7df71a933532

  8. Oregon DMV, Collision Reporting and Responsibilities. https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/driverid/accidentreport.aspx

About This Guide

Written by: ThatCarHitMe.com Editorial

BACK TO PORTLAND, OR
60 SEC CONNECTION

NEED LEGAL HELP?

Browse our directory to find qualified attorneys who handle cases like yours.

Find a Lawyer
SponsoredThatCarHitMe.com

Hurt in a crash that wasn't your fault?

A vetted personal injury attorney calls you back within minutes. No phone tag. No voicemails.

(888) 988-8341Free for accident victims