If you were just in a crash, the type of collision shapes almost everything that follows: your injuries, who is at fault, and how hard the claim will be. In the Seattle-Tacoma area, the three crashes people worry about most (getting T-boned at an intersection, hit head-on, or rolling the car) do not happen in the same places. They cluster in different corners of the map, and the local data shows where.
Washington set a goal to reach zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030, a target written into state law and one that made Washington the first state in the country to commit to zero.1 It has a long way to go. Between 2020 and 2024 the state logged 16,216 fatal and serious injury crashes, at an estimated cost to the public of $23.3 billion a year.1 2023 was the deadliest year on Washington roads since the 1990s. 2024 brought a little relief: 731 people died, down 9.6% from the year before.12
WSDOT sorts its worst crashes into a short list of "emphasis areas." Three of them line up with the collisions drivers dread, and each one favors a different kind of road.
T-bone crashes cluster at city intersections
Intersection crashes are the second-largest category statewide, with 5,530 fatal and serious injury crashes from 2020 through 2024, about a third of the total.1 On city streets the concentration is much sharper, close to 47%.1
Tacoma's own study shows why. The city looked at every serious crash from 2016 through 2020 and counted 384 that killed or severely injured someone, with 64 deaths.3 Intersections accounted for 78% of all crashes and 70% of the fatal and severe ones.3 Setting aside crashes that struck someone on foot, the most common serious crash types were a car hitting a fixed object and a car entering an intersection at an angle while another went straight, each 13% of the fatal and severe total; left-turn crashes across oncoming traffic came next at 9%.3 Those angle and left-turn collisions are the T-bone.
Speed and street type decide how bad it gets. In Tacoma, principal arterials carry 57% of the serious crashes while making up only 16% of the street grid, and the damage concentrates on faster arterials like Pacific Avenue (State Route 7, posted 35 mph) and Yakima Avenue at 30 mph.3 Seattle has the same problem on Aurora Avenue N (SR 99): that one street accounted for 19% of all traffic deaths citywide between 2018 and 2022.4
Seattle's redesign of Rainier Avenue S is the clearest local example of a fix that worked. Rainier is one of the city's top streets for injuries and deaths. After SDOT narrowed it from two travel lanes to one in each direction with a center turn lane, total collisions fell 24% and injury or fatal collisions fell 16%; dropping the limit to 25 mph and posting the new signs cut crashes another 22%.5 A lot of the traffic shifted over to Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, which was built to carry more of it.5
Head-on and wrong-way crashes on the highways
Lane departure is WSDOT's single largest emphasis area: 6,281 fatal and serious injury crashes over 2020 to 2024, or 39% of the state total.1 The head-on share of that, where a vehicle crosses into oncoming traffic, came to 1,314 fatal and serious injury crashes and jumped 38% between WSDOT's two most recent three-year periods.1 On the freeways and state highways WSDOT controls, including I-5, lane departures make up almost 45% of the most serious crashes.1
Head-ons are so deadly partly because of physics. NHTSA found that when a car and a light truck (an SUV or pickup) hit head-on in a fatal crash in 2023, an occupant in the car was 2.9 times more likely to be killed than someone in the truck.6
The wrong-way version is the worst of it. Early on June 2, 2024, a wrong-way driver hit two Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers head-on on State Route 512 near Canyon Road in Pierce County at a combined impact speed above 120 mph. Charles Fairbairn, 29, and Wendell Cerio, 22, were killed, and a third soldier was hurt.7 It was one of three wrong-way crashes across the region that same morning; a driver in a separate I-5 wreck registered a 0.214 blood-alcohol level, more than twice the legal limit.7 The NTSB, reviewing wrong-way crashes nationally, found they are almost always head-on, and that among drivers whose blood-alcohol was recorded, 59% were at or above 0.15.8 Impairment was the most common factor in Washington's 2024 traffic deaths, present in 48% of them.2
Rollovers on rural and higher-speed routes
Run-off-the-road crashes are the other half of the lane-departure problem, and they are where rollovers happen. Statewide, run-off-the-road crashes accounted for 4,948 fatal and serious injury crashes from 2020 through 2024, about 31% of the total, and they rose 31% between WSDOT's two recent reporting periods.1
This is a rural pattern more than a city one. On county roads, lane departures make up 56.5% of the most serious crashes, a bigger share than on any other part of Washington's system.1 The unincorporated stretches of King and Pierce counties, and the two-lane routes running east toward the Cascades and south of the metro, fit that description.
The vehicle you are in changes the odds. Nationally, rollovers caused 28% of all passenger-vehicle occupant deaths in 2023.6 Taller vehicles tip more easily: rollovers were behind 38% of pickup-occupant deaths and 33% of SUV-occupant deaths, against 20% for cars, and the rollover share ran higher still in rural crashes.6 Rollovers also throw people out of the vehicle, and 82% of occupants fully ejected in a fatal crash were killed.6 A seat belt is the main defense against that.
After a serious crash
These three crash types tend to leave real injuries and messy fault questions, so a few practical things help. Get checked by a doctor even if you feel fine, because adrenaline hides injuries for a day or two. Write down the report number: crashes on I-5, SR 512, and SR 7 are usually worked by the Washington State Patrol, while Seattle and Tacoma police handle their own city streets. Photograph the vehicles where they stopped, the signals, and the lane markings, since a T-bone often turns on who had the light and a head-on on who crossed the line.
Insurers move fast, and serious-injury claims are where they push hardest. If you are deciding whether to talk to a lawyer, you can start with the legal directory.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Washington State Department of Transportation, Getting to Zero: WSDOT's Highway Safety Improvement Program Implementation Plan 2025. https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-10/TargetZero-ImplementationPlan-HSIP2025.pdf
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Washington Traffic Safety Commission, Preliminary Traffic Fatality Numbers for 2024. https://wtsc.wa.gov/20555-2/
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City of Tacoma, Vision Zero Action Plan, September 2022. https://cms.tacoma.gov/PublicWorks/Engineering/VisionZero/FINAL%20Tacoma%20Vision%20Zero%20Action%20Plan%20September%202022.pdf
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Seattle Department of Transportation, Aurora Ave N Corridor Planning Study (Phase 1) Executive Summary, June 2025. https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/Projects/Aurora%20Ave%20Project/Aurora_Study_Ph_1_Executive%20Summary_Final_2025_06_18.pdf
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Seattle Department of Transportation, Rainier Ave S Vision Zero & Lake Washington Blvd Keep Moving Street Data Analysis, March 24, 2021. https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SDOT/ProjectsAndPrograms/Stay%20Healthy%20Streets/2021_RainierLkWABlvd_DataAnalysis.pdf
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National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts, Passenger Vehicles: 2023 Data (DOT HS 813 723), May 2025. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813723.pdf
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KOMO News, Pierce County wrong-way crashes, June 2024. https://komonews.com/news/local/pierce-county-wrong-way-crashes-impaired-drivers-washington-state-patrol-trooper-john-dattilo-interstate-5-canyon-road-injuries-vehicular-assault-odor-of-intoxicants-joint-base-lewish-mcchord-jblm-wendell-cerio-arizona-maine-report-i-705-tacoma-general-
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National Transportation Safety Board, Wrong-Way Driving Special Investigation Report (NTSB/SIR-12/01). https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SIR1201.pdf