Metro Detroit’s most dangerous intersections, by the numbers

Intersection crashes in Southeast Michigan, 2024

• 125 people were killed and 912 seriously injured in intersection crashes in SEMCOG’s seven-county region (Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw and Wayne). Both figures were up 13% from 2023, and the serious-injury count was a ten-year high.
• Intersections accounted for 31% of the region’s 402 traffic deaths and 41% of its 2,211 serious injuries.
• Angle and left-turn crashes, the typical intersection crash, were 21.1% of all crashes in the region but 28.9% of crashes that killed or seriously injured someone.
• Statewide, 316 of Michigan’s 1,012 fatal crashes in 2024 (31.2%) happened at intersections, and 84.2% of red-light-running crashes were angle crashes.

Three different questions

• Where do the most crashes happen? A count of all reported crashes, most of them property damage only. Busy intersections rank high partly because so many cars pass through.
• Where are people most often killed or seriously hurt? A count of crashes with a fatality or a suspected serious injury. SEMCOG’s tool opens on this ranking.
• Where is each trip riskiest? That needs traffic volumes, crashes per vehicle entering the intersection. Neither SEMCOG list makes that adjustment, so neither should be read as the risk to any one driver.

Most reported crashes, 2021–2025

Ranks with the same five-year total are tied. * SEMCOG groups several crash locations into one intersection here, such as both directions of a divided road or the ramps at an interchange; the figure is the group total. Van Dyke Avenue at 11 Mile Road appears twice because SEMCOG counts the Center Line and Warren sides separately.

Most fatal and serious-injury crashes, 2021–2025

Ties share a rank, and the next rank skips ahead: two intersections tie at 2, so the next rank is 4. Small numbers swing a lot from year to year; one bad year can move an intersection far up this list.

Seven of the ten intersections with the most fatal and serious-injury crashes are in Detroit, while the intersections with the most total crashes are mostly suburban commercial corridors. That difference is the main reason to look at both lists.

No intersection is on both top-20 lists. Comparing SEMCOG’s top 20 by total crashes with its top 20 by fatal and serious-injury crashes (ties included), none of the 40 places appears twice. Oakland County has 8 of the 20 busiest crash locations but 1 of the 20 most severe; Wayne County has 6 of the busiest and 13 of the most severe, 11 of them in Detroit. A high crash count and a high toll of deaths and serious injuries are, at the top of these lists, different places.

Near our Bloomfield Hills office

Several of the region’s highest-crash intersections are in the communities around our office on Woodward Avenue: 14 Mile Road at Orchard Lake Road (ranked 1st by total crashes), Telegraph Road at 12 Mile Road in Southfield (8th), Farmington Road at Maple Road in West Bloomfield (11th), and Square Lake Road at Franklin Road (13th) and Telegraph Road at Maple Road (16th) in Bloomfield Township. See Oakland County car accident claims.

Why intersection crashes are so serious

Most serious intersection crashes are angle crashes: one car runs a light or stop sign, or turns left across oncoming traffic, and strikes the side of another. A car’s side has far less room to absorb a crash than its front or back, which is why these crashes so often cause head, neck, back, rib and pelvic injuries. Fault usually turns on who had the right of way. See T-bone accidents: who is at fault.

After a crash at a busy intersection

1. Ask nearby businesses to save video the same day. Gas stations and stores at busy corners often have cameras, and footage is commonly overwritten within days.
2. Get the crash report number from the responding police agency. See how to get your crash report.
3. Ask about signal timing records if the other driver says the light was green. The road agency that runs the signal keeps them, and they can be requested under FOIA.
4. Apply for no-fault benefits in writing with your own insurer within one year. They are paid regardless of fault. See no-fault benefits.
5. Don’t give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement about who had the light before talking to a lawyer.

Source and method

• Source. SEMCOG, Southeast Michigan High Frequency Crash Locations, intersections, all road agencies, all seven counties. We read the figures from the tool’s published data layers on October 25, 2026; SEMCOG last updated them on October 14, 2026.
• Rankings. SEMCOG ranks by the five-year total (its table also shows the five-year average). We list the top 20 by total crashes and the top 10 by crashes with a fatality or suspected serious injury, using SEMCOG’s ranks, including ties.
• Communities. As SEMCOG assigns them. An intersection on a border can be listed under two communities.
• What’s not adjusted. No ranking here accounts for traffic volume, so they show where crashes concentrate, not the risk per trip.
• Data download. Both top-20 lists, with each year’s count, as a spreadsheet: semcog-intersections-2021-2025.csv. Please credit SEMCOG as the source.
• Earlier version. Until October 25, 2026, this page showed SEMCOG’s 2018–2022 list as reported in news coverage. It was replaced with the current 2021–2025 data from SEMCOG’s own tool.

Sources: SEMCOG High Frequency Crash Locations (2021–2025), retrieved October 25, 2026; SEMCOG, Traffic Crashes in Southeast Michigan, 2024; Michigan Traffic Crash Facts, 2024 General Facts and 2024 Fact Sheets. Compiled by Grove and Associates PLC.