The danger's to pedestrians and cyclists on L.A.'s streets are well known. One author famously crowned Los Angeles as "Worst Bike City in America," in 2018, and the City's saw an increase in traffic fatalities despite it's decade-long Vision Zero initiative to eliminate such deaths. A new study now claims to have identified the five deadliest intersections in the entire State of California, and to little surprise, all of them are located in Southern California. 

The report by Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers was based on six years of federal traffic fatality reports, reviewing the years between 2019 and 2024 - the latter year being the most recent yer with available data. Two intersections of the City of Los Angeles each saw three fatalities during that period - Obama Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard in Baldwin Hills and Central Avenue and 89th Street on the border between with South L.A. and unincorporated Florence-Firestone. Rounding out the top five, each seeing two total deaths, were the intersections of Main Street and Maple Avenue in Hesperia, Newport Boulevard and Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, and Compton Boulevard and Matthisen Avenue in Compton.

View of 89th Street and Central AvenueGoogle Street View

In the same six-year timeframe, Los Angeles County data indicates that 356 people were killed in crosswalks - by far the highest figure of any County in the state. Orange County saw 89 crosswalk pedestrian deaths.

In other parts of the state, San Diego County saw 86 such deaths, while Santa Clara County saw 53 fatalities, and Alameda County saw 51 deaths.

“Crosswalk fatal accidents often happen because of the poor infrastructure: cities don’t invest enough in road development, don’t divide traffic between streets, don’t accommodate the rising number of cars," said Sweat in a statement. "But drivers are responsible, too. If you, as a pedestrian, were crossing the street on the green light, on the marked path, and looked around before starting to walk, you’re in the right 10 times out of 10. Any car crash involving a pedestrian is a major health or even life danger for them; the risk for the driver is much lower.”

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