Detroit's Most Dangerous Roadways - Lee Steinberg Law Firm

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Detroit’s Most Dangerous Roadways

The Detroit Free Press had an interesting article recently about the most accident prone freeways in the metropolitan Detroit area.   Looking at 3 years of data, specifically between 2007-2009, the Free Press analysis found dangerous roadways throughout the region, some extremely treacherous.  One of the most accident prone areas was on I-75 between Rochester Road and Maple Road in Oakland County.  This stretch of freeway includes a dangerous curve that forces motorists to slow down abruptly and sometimes without warning, giving people little time to react to the action in front of them.

The data, compiled from Michigan State Police traffic crash reports, tells the following story:

  • Among the other top 20 high-crash segments of freeways in metro Detroit, most are in the suburbs, and more than half are in Oakland County.
  • I-96 and I-75 stand out, with seven high-crash segments each. In fact, stretches of both directions of I-96 near Inkster Road in Livonia and Redford Township rank highly. And there’s a cluster of segments of south I-75 near Chrysler’s headquarters and M-59 in Auburn Hills that ranks highly for crashes based on the freeway’s traffic volumes.
  • Freeways are less likely to result in fatalities than county and city roads.  In fact, in 2009 there were 871 people killed in traffic crashes, only 80 were on interstates.  The rest were on state and local roads.
  • Freeways and interstates also tend to be safer when looking at the number of crashes per miles driven.  The Michigan highway safety office said the number of people killed in crashes on interstates based on every 100 million miles driven in Michigan was 0.3, compared with 1.4 on smaller state highways and 1.1 on county and city roads.  Based on this data, it is more dangerous to drive on city and county roads then interstate expressways.

The article also has a database that allows you to search for accident data throughout southeast Michigan counties. The database is here.

Search away for dangerous roadways in your area.