For journalists & researchers
You are welcome to cite and link to this guide. When you do, please credit LawMachinewith a link to this URL. The corridors and intersections below are drawn from the City of Chicago's official Vision Zero High Crash Network and publicly reported crash data — not a proprietary ranking. Sources are listed at the bottom.
See the interactive map
We've plotted the city's official High Crash Corridors on an interactive map you can explore and embed. View the Chicago High Crash Corridors map.
Chicago's highest-crash corridors
A handful of arterial streets carry a disproportionate share of Chicago's serious crashes. The following corridors are documented on the city's High Crash Network. We list them without invented rankings or crash counts — for exact, segment-level figures, consult the official sources below:
Western Avenue
One of the longest continuous streets in the city, Western sees dense mixed traffic — vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists — across many neighborhoods, and is designated on the city's High Crash Network.
Pulaski Road
A long north–south arterial cutting through the West Side; high traffic volumes and frequent signalized intersections make it a Vision Zero priority corridor.
Cicero Avenue
A major Southwest/Northwest Side corridor and truck route, Cicero combines high speeds with heavy commercial traffic.
Halsted Street
Running nearly the length of the city, Halsted mixes commercial districts, transit, and pedestrian activity at its busiest intersections.
Intersections repeatedly flagged as high-risk
Beyond full corridors, several specific intersections show up again and again in crash analyses for their frequency and severity of collisions:
- 79th Street / Stony Island Avenue / South Chicago Avenue — a complex multi-street junction on the South Side
- 95th Street & Stony Island Avenue — a high-volume South Side crossing
- Garfield Boulevard at Wentworth Avenue
- Garfield Boulevard at Wells Street
- Michigan Avenue at Wacker Drive — a heavily trafficked downtown junction
Why crashes cluster where they do
- High traffic volume: the busiest arterials simply expose more vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists to conflict points.
- Complex geometry: multi-street junctions like 79th/Stony Island/South Chicago create more potential collision paths and driver confusion.
- Speed on wide arterials: streets built to move traffic quickly raise the severity of every crash that does happen.
- Mixed use: corridors that combine commercial districts, transit stops, and dense pedestrian activity see more vulnerable-road-user crashes.
This is the logic behind Chicago's Vision Zero High Crash Network — concentrating safety investment on the small share of streets responsible for most serious injuries and deaths.
Staying safer on these roads
- Treat wide arterials like Western, Cicero, and Pulaski as higher-risk — leave extra following distance and expect sudden stops.
- Slow down and cover the brake approaching complex multi-street intersections.
- Watch for pedestrians and cyclists on mixed-use corridors, especially when turning.
- Avoid all distractions at signalized intersections, where failure-to-yield and red-light crashes concentrate.
Sources
- Chicago Department of Transportation — Vision Zero Chicago High Crash Network
- City of Chicago Data Portal — Traffic Crashes dataset
- Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) — Illinois Crash Facts & Statistics
Corridors and intersections above are compiled from the official sources listed — primarily the City of Chicago's Vision Zero High Crash Network designation. We do not publish per-street crash counts or a proprietary ranking; consult the sources for exact, segment-level tables.
Injured on one of these roads?
If you were hurt in a crash anywhere in Chicago, call (312) 222-0202 for a free, no-obligation consultation. You pay nothing unless we win.