Top-rated car accident lawyers in the Cleveland, Akron and Canton region

The hours after a wreck run together. You are trading insurance information on the shoulder of I-77, your car is going onto a flatbed, and a claims adjuster is already calling. Northeast Ohio drivers deal with this constantly. Ohio recorded 264,954 traffic crashes in 2025, and a heavy share of them landed in the Cleveland, Akron and Canton counties.¹

The three anchor counties tell the story. Cuyahoga County logged 24,156 crashes in 2025, including 75 fatal and 6,651 injury crashes.² Summit County, built around Akron, had 13,186 crashes with 31 fatal.³ Stark County, anchored by Canton, recorded 8,569 crashes, also with 31 fatal.⁴ Where and why those crashes happen is the first thing a good local lawyer checks, because the police report and the traffic data behind it often decide who pays.

Where crashes cluster around Cleveland

In Cuyahoga County, the interstates carry the heaviest crash load. I-90 alone saw 1,278 crashes in 2025, followed by I-480 with 958 and I-71 with 582.² Those are the numbers behind every rush-hour backup between the Innerbelt and the West Shoreway.

Surface streets have their own trouble spots. The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), the region's planning body, ranked its worst corridors in the SAVE safety plan after studying ten years of crash data.⁵ Cleveland streets fill most of that list. St. Clair Avenue on the near East Side, West 117th Street, West 25th Street, Superior Avenue and East 93rd Street each recorded well over 130 crashes, and several saw nine to twelve people killed or seriously hurt.⁶ Across the five-county NOACA region, 6,878 people were killed or seriously injured over a recent five-year stretch, and the agency set a goal of cutting that number in half by 2040.⁵ NOACA director Grace Gallucci has been blunt that most of these crashes trace back to driver choices rather than the roads.⁶

Akron and Summit County

Around Akron, I-77 is the busiest crash route with 941 in 2025, followed by State Route 8 with 781 and State Route 18 with 576.³ Summit County also has the weakest seat belt use of the three counties, 83.0 percent, well under the statewide 87.8 percent.³ That gap matters, because unbelted occupants are far more likely to die in a crash others walk away from.

The Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) reviewed 46,576 crashes from 2022 through 2024 and flagged 217 high-crash intersections across Summit, Portage and northeastern Wayne counties.⁷ The worst was Rhodes Avenue and West Thornton Street in Akron's Sherbondy Hill neighborhood, with 26 crashes and nearly a 60 percent injury rate.⁸ Riverview and Ira roads in Cuyahoga Falls ranked second, with a fatal crash inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park.⁸ Even as total crashes fell, serious-injury crashes across the AMATS area climbed almost 19 percent, from 333 in 2022 to 405 in 2024.⁸

Canton and Stark County

In Stark County, U.S. Route 62 topped the crash list with 498 in 2025, just ahead of I-77 with 492 and State Route 172 with 489.⁴ Speed is getting worse here. Speed-related crashes jumped from 585 in 2024 to 760 in 2025.⁴

The Stark County Area Transportation Study (SCATS) now rates State Route 173 and Paris Avenue in Marlboro Township as the county's most dangerous intersection, with 22 crashes over 2022 through 2024, most of them tied to drivers failing to yield.⁹ A roundabout is planned there for 2028 or 2029.⁹ Walnut Avenue at 15th Street NE in Canton and the Dressler Road and Everhard Road pairing in Jackson Township also rank near the top, with Dressler and Everhard drawing 20 crashes in 2024 alone.⁹ For years the county's worst spot was 12th Street NW and Market Avenue N in downtown Canton, which SCATS has repeatedly targeted for a redesign.¹⁰

What the reports say about causes

The same factors show up in every county file. Failure to yield led all crash categories in 2025, with 3,972 such crashes in Cuyahoga, 1,668 in Summit and 1,414 in Stark.²³⁴ Impaired driving stayed high, at 828 OVI-related crashes in Cuyahoga, 411 in Summit and 329 in Stark.²³⁴ Distraction remains a factor in hundreds more; Cuyahoga alone recorded 679 distracted-related crashes.²

Ohio law has tightened on that last one. Since April 2023, Senate Bill 288 made holding or using a phone behind the wheel a primary offense under Ohio Revised Code 4511.204, so an officer can now stop a driver for that alone, and the fines double in a work zone.¹¹ When a distracted or impaired driver is cited, that citation becomes a strong piece of a civil claim.

Deadlines and fault rules a local claim runs on

Two rules shape almost every Ohio crash case. The first is the clock. Under Ohio Revised Code 2305.10, you generally have two years from the crash date to file a bodily-injury lawsuit.¹² Miss it and the claim is usually gone, whatever its merits.

The second is fault sharing. Ohio Revised Code 2315.33 bars you from recovering anything if you were more than 50 percent responsible, and it cuts your award by your share of the blame when you were 50 percent or less.¹³ A single line in a crash report about who failed to yield can swing thousands of dollars. This is where a lawyer who knows these roads earns the top-rated label, by pulling the crash diagram and the agency data before the insurer frames the story. If you are looking for one, thatcarhitme.com keeps a legal directory of attorneys who handle these cases.

Orange-barrel season and where to slow down

Construction is its own hazard here. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has 997 projects worth $3.4 billion running in 2026, several of them sitting in the region's worst crash corridors.¹⁴ In Cleveland, ODOT is spending $328 million to replace pavement and five bridges on I-90 between East 9th Street and Carnegie Avenue, work that stretches into 2032, plus a $173 million rebuild of I-90 between Hilliard and West boulevards through 2028.¹⁴ Akron's I-77 is being widened between Ghent and Everett roads for $52 million, and the State Route 8 high-level bridge is being replaced for $157.6 million.¹⁴ Phone fines and speeding penalties both double in these zones.¹¹

None of this brings back a totaled car or undoes an injury. What it does is show why the details matter. The road and the report are local, and so is the help you need to read them.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com, Ohio (Statewide) Crash Report, 2025 Annual Report. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/ohio/statewide/2025-annual-report

2. Ohio Traffic Safety Office and Ohio State Highway Patrol, 2025 Cuyahoga County Traffic Crashes FAST FACTS. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Cuyahoga.pdf

3. Ohio Traffic Safety Office and Ohio State Highway Patrol, 2025 Summit County Traffic Crashes FAST FACTS. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Summit.pdf

4. Ohio Traffic Safety Office and Ohio State Highway Patrol, 2025 Stark County Traffic Crashes FAST FACTS. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/otso.ohio.gov/DataSheets/Stark.pdf

5. Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, SAVE: NOACA's Plan for Transportation Safety. https://www.noaca.org/regional-planning/transportation-planning/regional-safety-program/transportation-safety-action-plan

6. News 5 Cleveland, "Agency identifies Northeast Ohio's 10 most dangerous traffic corridors" (NOACA SAVE plan data). https://www.news5cleveland.com/traffic/traffic-news/agency-identifies-northeast-ohios-10-most-dangerous-traffic-corridors-but-finds-driver-actions-cause-most-crashes

7. Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, 2022-2024 Annual Crash Report (Reports, Maps & Data). https://www.amatsplanning.org/reports-maps-data

8. Signal Akron, "Here are the most unsafe roadways and intersections in Akron" (AMATS 2022-2024 Crash Report). https://signalakron.org/most-unsafe-roadways-and-intersections-in-akron-amats/

9. News 5 Cleveland, "Stark County's most dangerous intersections ranked" (SCATS crash report). https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/stark-countys-most-dangerous-intersections-ranked

10. Stark County Area Transportation Study, Crash Reports and Safety Work Plans, Stark County Regional Planning Commission. https://rpc.starkcountyohio.gov/government/offices/regional_planning_commission/departments/stark_county_area_transportation_study_(scats)/safety.php

11. Ohio Revised Code Section 4511.204, Driving while using electronic wireless communications device. https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-4511.204

12. Ohio Revised Code Section 2305.10, Bodily injury or injury to personal property. https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2305.10

13. Ohio Revised Code Section 2315.33, Contributory fault of person bringing action. https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2315.33

14. Cleveland 19 News, "ODOT has more than 900 projects planned this construction season" (Ohio Department of Transportation, 2026). https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/03/31/odot-has-more-than-900-projects-planned-this-construction-season/