Top-rated car accident lawyers in Portland, Oregon

The minutes after a crash on I-84, Powell Boulevard, or a side street in Montavilla are a blur. You check whether everyone is okay and try to remember whether you are even supposed to move the cars. The medical bills and the insurance claim come later, and that is usually when people start looking for a lawyer. This page is about the local facts that shape those claims in Portland, and how to find an attorney who actually knows them.

Start with the number that matters most. In 2025, 39 people were killed in traffic crashes on Portland streets, the second straight year the count fell and about 38 percent below the average of the previous four years.¹ That is real progress from 2023, when the city recorded 69 deaths, its worst year on record.¹ Fewer deaths does not mean fewer crashes, though. Across Oregon, serious injuries have climbed even as fatalities dropped.²

Where Portland crashes actually happen

Portland tracks its most dangerous corridors as the High Crash Network: 30 streets and 30 intersections that make up roughly 8 percent of the city's street mileage but accounted for an average of 67 percent of traffic deaths between 2020 and 2024.³ If you were hurt in Portland, there is a good chance it happened on one of them.

The list reads like an east-side commute. 82nd Avenue, 122nd Avenue, Powell Boulevard, Division Street, Foster Road, Sandy Boulevard, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Barbur Boulevard, and Stark Street are all on it.³ Some of the worst single points are where those arterials meet freeway ramps. PBOT's data flags NE Glisan Street at the I-84 ramp (78 crashes), NE Halsey Street at 122nd Avenue (75 crashes), and SE Foster Road at the I-205 ramp (57 crashes) among the highest-volume crash intersections.³

The pattern is geographic. In 2024, 71 percent of traffic deaths happened on the High Crash Network, and nearly half occurred in District 1, the city's easternmost council district.⁴ Speed was a factor in at least 48 percent of those deaths.⁴ Pedestrians keep taking the worst of it. They were 36 percent of the people killed in 2024 and 51 percent in 2025.⁴¹

The 82nd Avenue story

For decades 82nd Avenue was an "orphan highway," a state route running straight through Portland neighborhoods that ODOT owned but rarely improved. That changed on June 1, 2022, when the state handed a 7-mile stretch from NE Killingsworth Street to SE Clatsop Street over to city control, along with a roughly $185 million commitment to rebuild it.⁵ The reason was blunt. Between 2015 and 2019, 82nd saw nearly 2,000 crashes, and 76 people were killed or seriously injured.⁵

The early results are hard to argue with. For the first time in years, there were no deadly crashes on 82nd Avenue in 2025.¹ Automated enforcement is part of why. Portland now runs more than 30 speed and intersection safety cameras across the High Crash Network, including new sites at NE 82nd Avenue and NE Klickitat and at SE Powell Boulevard and SE 34th Avenue, and those cameras issued more than 69,000 citations between November 2025 and mid-2026.⁶ At the older camera locations installed back in 2016, speeding dropped 59 percent, and driving more than 10 mph over the limit fell 88 percent.⁶

The wider Oregon picture

Portland's numbers sit inside a statewide trend. Oregon recorded 587 traffic deaths in 2023, 539 in 2024, and a preliminary 487 in 2025.² Fatalities are falling, but serious injuries are not. The state counted 5,887 serious injuries in 2024, well above the levels of a few years earlier.² Speeding shows up in about a quarter of fatal and serious injury crashes, and roughly a third of those also involve an impaired driver.² Statewide pedestrian deaths reached 97 in 2024.²

Drive Barbur Boulevard toward Tigard, cross the county line into Gresham, or head out I-205, and you are moving through the corridors that generate those figures.

What Oregon law gives you after a crash

Oregon rules decide what your claim is worth and how long you have to bring it. A few matter more than the rest.

You generally have two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit under ORS 12.110.⁷ Miss that deadline and the court will almost always throw the case out, no matter how badly you were hurt.

Oregon uses a modified comparative fault rule. Under ORS 31.600, you can still recover money when you were partly to blame, as long as your share of the fault is not greater than the combined fault of everyone else involved.⁸ Once your share crosses 50 percent you recover nothing, which is why insurers work so hard to pin fault on you.

Your own policy pays first for medical care. Every Oregon auto policy has to include at least $15,000 in personal injury protection (PIP) that covers reasonable medical and dental expenses for two years after the crash, plus wage-loss benefits of 70 percent of lost income up to $3,000 a month, under ORS 742.524.⁹ PIP pays no matter who caused the crash.

For the at-fault driver's liability, Oregon sets the floor low. State law requires only 25/50/20 coverage: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for injuries, and $20,000 for property damage, under ORS 806.070.¹⁰¹¹ Because those limits are thin, every policy also has to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage of at least $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash, which is often what actually pays when the other driver has little or no insurance, under ORS 742.502.¹²

Finding the right lawyer in Portland

"Top-rated" is a marketing phrase, so treat it as a starting point and not proof of anything. What you want is a lawyer who handles Oregon car crash claims regularly, will tell you plainly whether you even need one, and works on a contingency fee so you owe nothing up front. Ask how many cases like yours they have taken to trial, who will do the day-to-day work on your file, and how they get paid if you lose.

You can compare attorneys and reach out through the thatcarhitme.com legal directory. Bring the basics to any first call: the police crash report number, photos, the names of nearby cameras or businesses that might have footage, and your own insurance information so the lawyer can check your PIP and uninsured motorist coverage. In a state where the required liability limits are this low, that uninsured motorist coverage is frequently the difference between a real recovery and an empty judgment.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Portland Bureau of Transportation, "Traffic deaths decline for a second consecutive year, 38 percent below recent years, with significant improvement in East Portland," March 5, 2026. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2026/3/5/news-release-traffic-deaths-decline-second-consecutive-year-38-percent

2. Oregon Department of Transportation, "State of the System: Safety." https://www.oregon.gov/odot/state-of-the-system/pages/safety.aspx

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

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

5. Portland Bureau of Transportation, "Portland City Council unanimously approves Building a Better 82nd, with historic transfer of ownership to PBOT," April 28, 2022. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2022/4/28/news-release-portland-city-council-unanimously-approves-building

6. Portland Bureau of Transportation, "Over 30 speed and intersection cameras operating across Portland's High Crash Network," June 9, 2026. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/news/2026/6/9/over-30-speed-intersection-cameras-operating-across-portlands-high

7. Oregon Revised Statutes 12.110 (actions for injury to person). https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors012.html

8. Oregon Revised Statutes 31.600 (comparative negligence). https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors031.html

9. Oregon Revised Statutes 742.524 (personal injury protection benefits). https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors742.html

10. Oregon Revised Statutes 806.070 (minimum financial responsibility amounts). https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors806.html

11. Oregon DMV, "Insurance requirements." https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/driverid/insurance.aspx

12. Oregon Revised Statutes 742.502 (uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage). https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors742.html