Los Angeles Pedestrian Safety Report: 2025 Data, Danger Corridors & What Needs to Change

Reviewed and Updated by Steven M. Sweat, October 2026

Los Angeles streets kill more people than its criminals do. For three consecutive years, traffic fatalities in the city of Los Angeles have outnumbered homicides — a public health crisis that hides in plain sight behind the city’s headline crime statistics. Pedestrians bear the sharpest edge of that crisis, accounting for more than half of all traffic deaths in the city in recent years.

This report compiles the most current available data on Los Angeles pedestrian fatalities, identifies the corridors and communities where the risk is highest, examines why the city’s landmark Vision Zero program has failed to reverse the trend, and explains what legal protections exist for pedestrians and their families when a negligent driver or a dangerous road condition is responsible.

Steven M. Sweat has represented pedestrian accident victims in Los Angeles for over 30 years. This report uses the most recently available LAPD and CHP data.

1. Los Angeles Pedestrian Fatalities: The Numbers

City of Los Angeles — Annual Fatality Trend (LAPD Data)

Sources: LAPD Traffic Collision Records; CHP SWITRS; LAist review of LAPD data (February 2026); Crosstown LA; Streets Are For Everyone annual reports.

2. Ten Years of Vision Zero: What the Data Actually Shows

In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted Vision Zero — a public safety framework originating in Sweden — with a stated goal of eliminating all traffic deaths in Los Angeles by 2025. The city has budgeted about $36 million a year for the program in recent years. The result has been the opposite of the goal.

Why Vision Zero Failed: The April 2025 Audit Findings

An audit of the program by KPMG for the City of Los Angeles, reported in April 2025, found unclear citywide governance, a lack of leadership commitment, and funding concentrated on engineering rather than education, enforcement and evaluation. Contributing factors include:

• Lack of cohesion across departments. Vision Zero spans LADOT, LAPD, public works, and public health — but these agencies operated with insufficient coordination. Enforcement, engineering, and education initiatives were not synchronized.
• Insufficient political will. Despite roughly $36 million a year in recent budgets, the program has been consistently underfunded relative to its scope and deprioritized when competing with other city initiatives.
• Imbalanced approach. From approximately 2019 onward, the city shifted emphasis heavily toward engineering (road redesign) and away from enforcement. Traffic enforcement declined sharply during and after the pandemic, and fatalities rose in parallel.
• Scale problem. LADOT’s safety treatments work on the specific streets where they are deployed. But Los Angeles has 6,500 miles of streets. Treating 6% of them effectively cannot eliminate deaths on the other 94%.
• Post-pandemic behavioral shift. Traffic speeds increased dramatically when roads emptied during the pandemic. Those habits persisted. LA’s wide lanes and infrequent signals reward high-speed driving while punishing the pedestrians who must cross it.

3. The High Injury Network: Where Pedestrian Deaths Concentrate

Los Angeles pedestrian deaths are not randomly distributed across the city’s 6,500 miles of streets. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s own data establishes that just 6% of LA street miles account for 65% of all pedestrian and cyclist deaths and serious injuries — a concentrated danger zone the city calls its High Injury Network (HIN).

High Injury Network Street Characteristics

The streets that make up the HIN share a consistent set of features that traffic engineers call ‘stroads’ — hybrids of residential streets and high-speed arterials that combine pedestrian activity with multi-lane vehicle speeds:

• Wide multi-lane design. Streets like Sepulveda Boulevard, Vermont Avenue, Western Avenue, Figueroa Street, and Avalon Boulevard carry high-speed through traffic through areas where people live, shop, and walk. Wide lanes signal to drivers that high speed is acceptable.
• Long crossing distances and signal spacing. Pedestrians on many LA arterials must cross five to seven lanes of traffic with limited refuge islands and long signal wait times that incentivize risky mid-block crossings.
• Poor lighting. Nationally, 76% of pedestrian deaths occur in the dark (NHTSA, 2024 data).
• Freeway adjacency. Streets near freeway on/off ramps consistently appear in the highest-crash data. Drivers decelerating from freeway speeds or accelerating toward on-ramps pose acute danger to pedestrians crossing nearby intersections.
• SUV and large vehicle prevalence. SUVs and large pickups strike pedestrians in the chest and head rather than the legs, dramatically increasing the probability of fatal injury. The share of SUVs and pickups in LA’s vehicle fleet grows each year.

Geographic Concentration: South Los Angeles

Traffic violence in Los Angeles is not only geographically concentrated — it is inequitably distributed. The communities bearing the highest burden are predominantly low-income, Black, and Latino neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, which have historically received less investment in pedestrian infrastructure:

• The concentration of the city’s most dangerous intersections — San Pedro/Washington, Florence/Vermont, Avalon/Manchester — in South LA reflects decades of underinvestment in crosswalk signals, sidewalk maintenance, and lighting on streets that carry both heavy truck traffic and high pedestrian volumes.
• Residents of South LA are more likely to walk and use transit than residents of wealthier neighborhoods, increasing their exposure to streets designed primarily for vehicles, not people.

For the specific intersection data showing which locations recorded the highest crash concentrations over the past four years, see our companion analysis: The 25 Most Dangerous Intersections in Los Angeles Based on Crash Data.

4. What Is Killing Pedestrians: Causes and Contributing Factors

Los Angeles pedestrian deaths follow a few recurring patterns. People on foot are now the largest group killed on city streets: in 2023, more than half of all traffic deaths in the City of Los Angeles were pedestrians struck by vehicles, according to LAPD data analyzed by Crosstown LA. Speed is a major factor. A 2022 analysis by the advocacy group Streets Are for Everyone found that more than one-third of the city’s collisions involved vehicles traveling at unsafe speeds. Many drivers also flee: 108 of the 345 people killed in Los Angeles traffic crashes in 2023 died in hit-and-runs. Nationally, NHTSA data show that 76% of pedestrian deaths happen after dark, 73% occur away from intersections, and alcohol use by the driver or pedestrian was reported in 43% of fatal pedestrian crashes (2024 data). The danger is also concentrated. The city’s High Injury Network covers just 6% of Los Angeles street miles but accounts for 65% of the deaths and serious injuries among people walking and biking.

Sources: Crosstown LA, “Another awful year on Los Angeles streets” (Jan. 19, 2024) and “Los Angeles suffering from a spike in deadly hit-and-run collisions” (Nov. 25, 2024); NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 2024 data; U.S. Department of Transportation, Vision Zero Los Angeles profile.

5. California Statewide Context

Los Angeles is part of a statewide problem. In 2023, 1,106 pedestrians were killed in motor vehicle crashes in California, roughly three every day, and pedestrians made up 27% of all traffic deaths in the state. That was down from 1,213 pedestrian deaths in 2022. California’s pedestrian deaths are overwhelmingly an urban, nighttime problem: 92% of fatal pedestrian crashes occurred in urban areas, and 51% happened between 6 p.m. and midnight. Only 22% of the state’s pedestrian deaths occurred at intersections; the rest happened at mid-block crossings and other locations away from signals and crosswalks. Principal arterials, the wide multi-lane roads that make up much of Los Angeles’s High Injury Network, were the most common location for fatal pedestrian crashes, at 39%.

Sources: California Office of Traffic Safety, Traffic Safety Quick Stats; UC Berkeley SafeTREC, 2025 Traffic Safety Facts: Pedestrian Safety (FARS 2023 and provisional SWITRS 2023 data).

6. What Needs to Change: Evidence-Based Recommendations

Engineering Interventions

• Daylighting at crosswalks. Removing parked vehicles from the final 20 feet before crosswalks improves driver sight lines and reduces pedestrian strikes. New York implemented this at scale; LA has done so on a limited basis.
• Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPIs). Giving pedestrians a 3–7 second head start before vehicles receive a green light reduces conflict and improves visibility. LADOT has installed LPIs at hundreds of intersections; broader deployment is needed.
• Raised crosswalks and speed tables. Physical infrastructure that forces vehicles to slow before intersections reduces both speed and pedestrian deaths. Effective but expensive at scale.
• Lighting upgrades on HIN corridors. The correlation between darkness and pedestrian fatality is the strongest in the data. LED upgrades on the 20 highest-fatality corridors would have an immediate measurable effect.

Enforcement Interventions

• Speed cameras (AB 645). Los Angeles’s first cameras are scheduled to go live October 26, 2026, on up to 125 locations.
• Targeted DUI enforcement on pedestrian-heavy corridors. Nationally, alcohol use by the driver or pedestrian was reported in 43% of fatal pedestrian crashes in 2024 (NHTSA). Targeting DUI enforcement on HIN corridors during peak fatality hours (6 PM–midnight) would reduce deaths.

Policy Interventions

• Equity-centered infrastructure investment. South LA communities bear disproportionate fatality rates despite having less political capital to demand infrastructure improvements. Fatality data — not council district political weight — should drive spending.
• Speed limit reductions on HIN corridors. Reducing posted speeds from 35–40 mph to 25–30 mph on the highest-risk corridors, backed by enforcement, would materially reduce fatality severity.

7. Your Legal Rights as a Pedestrian Injury Victim in California

Driver Liability

California Vehicle Code §21950 requires all drivers to yield the right of way to pedestrians at both marked and unmarked crosswalks. Vehicle Code §22350 requires drivers to travel at a speed that is safe for conditions — not merely at or below the posted limit. A driver who strikes a pedestrian in a crosswalk, at a crossing, or at any location where a pedestrian is foreseeably present faces significant liability under California negligence law.

Government Entity Liability

When a dangerous road design — inadequate lighting, a missing crosswalk signal, a defective curb cut, a malfunctioning traffic signal — contributes to a pedestrian fatality or injury, the City of Los Angeles, Caltrans, or another government entity may bear liability under the Government Claims Act. Claims against government entities require filing a government tort claim within six months of the date of injury — far shorter than the standard two-year personal injury statute of limitations. Missing this deadline is typically fatal to the claim.

Comparative Fault and Pedestrian Claims

California follows pure comparative negligence — a pedestrian who was crossing mid-block, against a signal, or otherwise contributing to the accident can still recover compensation, with damages reduced by their percentage of fault. Insurance companies routinely inflate pedestrian fault to minimize payouts. See: California Comparative Fault Law: Pure Comparative Negligence Explained (2026 Guide).

For a complete guide to your legal rights after a pedestrian accident — including what to do at the scene, how liability is established, and when a government entity may share responsibility — see: Pedestrian Accident Lawyer Los Angeles: Rights After Injury.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Injured in a Pedestrian Accident in Los Angeles? Call Steven M. Sweat.

If you or a family member has been struck by a vehicle anywhere in Los Angeles or Southern California, you have legal rights — and the clock starts immediately. Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers, APC has represented pedestrian accident victims for over 30 years, recovering compensation for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and in wrongful death cases, for the full scope of a family’s loss.

We handle pedestrian accident cases on a strict contingency fee basis — no fee unless we recover compensation for you. For an overview of your rights and the legal process, see our Los Angeles Pedestrian Accident Lawyers practice page.

Data Sources and Methodology

All statistics are attributed to their original source.

• Los Angeles Police Department Traffic Collision Records (via LAist review of LAPD data, February 2026; Crosstown LA analysis)
• Los Angeles Department of Transportation Vision Zero Program data and High Injury Network analysis; LADOT Safety Study 2024-2025
• City of Los Angeles Office of the City Administrative Officer Vision Zero investment data
• Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) annual traffic fatality reports (2021-2024)
• NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)
• California Office of Traffic Safety (CA OTS) pedestrian safety program data
• U.S. Department of Transportation / Federal Highway Administration LA High Injury Network documentation
• UC Berkeley SafeTREC, 2025 Traffic Safety Facts: Pedestrian Safety (FARS 2023 / provisional SWITRS 2023)

Author: Steven M. Sweat, California State Bar #181867 | First published: May 2026 | Informational purposes only; does not constitute legal advice.