America's 100 Deadliest Highways

[A.J. Bertin]

I came across this article in The Daily Beast which lists the 100 interstates in the U.S. which are most likely to have fatal car accidents. Interesting article with some statistics about each one.

Here's a link to the article:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-31/deadliest-highways-ranking-the-100-interstates-most-likely-to-cause-a-fatal-crash/

I tallied up every state in the list, and here the states with the highest number of interstates in this ranking:

California - 6
Texas - 6
Louisiana - 5
Tennessee - 5
West Virginia - 5
Missouri - 5
Arizona - 5

There were 14 states plus the District of Columbia that did not have any of their interstates on this ranking.

[agentsteel53]

A lot of places all over the US have large cities with lots of traffic.  Who'd have thunk?

[Revive 755]

The listing would be much better if it would list the particular stretch of highway having the accident problem, instead of making it look like the whole interstate across a state is bad.  Example is #85, I-55 in Missouri, which has had an accident problem in Jefferson County where it needs widening, but as far as I know is much better outside the St. Louis area.

[mightyace]

One thing that I noticed is that a lot of the entries are for short stretches of interstate in a state.  (I-76 in NJ, I-55 in TN, I-70 in WV, etc.)

It's real easy for a short stretch of highway to have one bad accident that kills 3 people and boom they're at the top!

[ctsignguy]

of more significance i think are the deadlier TWO-lane roads in this country, of which there are far more of them.....like "Suicide Six" between Bolton Notch and Willimantic in Connecticut (was to have been replaced by the now cancelled I=84 between Hartford and Providence....)

[Duke87]

Per mile is the wrong denominator. That skews higher-trafficked roads towards the top. Gotta go by per vehicle-mile.

And yes, treating, say, I-95 in Florida as all one segment of highway is ridiculous. 

[florida]

Per mile is the wrong denominator. That skews higher-trafficked roads towards the top. Gotta go by per vehicle-mile.

And yes, treating, say, I-95 in Florida as all one segment of highway is ridiculous. 

Or I-75 down here. Highlighting certain sections would have been more strategic if you want to improve safety.

[SSOWorld]

I-80 in California doesn't surprise me.  On holiday weekends it's a parking lot from the bay area all the way up to Nevada. 

I-94 in Illinois - Now I wonder if it is that string of ramps with short distances between just north of the Circle?

Interesting how I-95 shows up for every state from Rhode Island South - Why not Massachusetts???

[Chris]

It would be much better if they take traffic volumes into account. Of course a road with 100,000 vehicles per day has more fatalities than some back-road with 1,000 vpd. What matters is the number of fatalities per 1 million driven miles.

[SidS1045]

Interesting how I-95 shows up for every state from Rhode Island South - Why not Massachusetts???

It's there...#58.

[Tom]

LIFE magazine did an article on deadly highways in its May 30, 1969 edition, page 24d:
http://books.google.com/books?id=a08EAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1