Dangerous roads

It may be the riskiest thing you do, and if you're like most people, you do it every day: get in your car, get on the road and take your chances.

To identify the most dangerous roads in America, Dateline analyzed five years of federal crash data. We added up the fatalities, county by county, road by road, during that period. Of course roads vary by how long and how busy they are, but for our survey we decided to stick to total fatalities. We found roads with high numbers of deaths, then we visited those deadly roads, some of them near you.

We'll start our survey not in a car, but trying to avoid them -- on roads that are most dangerous to people on foot. Pedestrian fatalities account for about 10 percent of all traffic deaths, and each one shatters someone's family.

Search for dangerous roads Dateline combed through more than 100,000 accident reports, trying to identify the deadliest roads in America. There are lots of reasons a road can be dangerous -- drunk drivers, speeders, highways so poorly designed they're treacherous even for careful drivers and pedestrians. Click here to find out about roads in your county.

It was a muggy august night in the town of New Port Richey, North of Tampa. Billy Uhle and his mom, Nanette, discussed whether he would sleep over at a friend's house or walk home.  About 1 a.m., Billy decided to walk. He was a mile from his house, on the side of the road. For reasons no one knows, a car veered right.

It's a sight both horrible and common when a car hits a pedestrian at high speed. Shoes rooted to the pavement, the victim is tossed down the road like a rag doll. Billy's Uhle's body was found 25 feet from the point of impact.  

Billy wasn't drunk, wasn't doing anything reckless, wasn't doing anything careless. He was just walking along the edge of the road. That was enough.

Take one family's grief and multiply it by 100. That's how many pedestrians have been hit and killed on Florida's US-19 in five years. It's a six-lane meat grinder running 30 miles up Florida's Gulf Coast.  We first visited in 2002, and found the shoulders of the road dotted with white crosses memorializing the dead. With fatalities in triple figures, US-19 is at the top of our list of dangerous roads. 

Sgt. Erik Anthes: “It's depressing because you see the carnage that goes on out there.”

Sgt. Anthes has driven US-19 since he learned to drive. Now he's in charge of the Pasco County Sheriff's Department Traffic Safety Program. He showed us how miles go by without a sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to walk the often muddy shoulder or take their chances on the pavement. And when night fell, we saw long stretches of road without streetlights, making pedestrians all but invisible to speeding drivers.

US-19 may be the most dangerous road in America for pedestrians who have to cross it or walk along it, but it has plenty of company. In our review of five years of federal crash data, we found roads from coast to coast with no sidewalks, unsafe crossings, speeding traffic and some roads that are dangerous just because of where they are. The lesson here is pretty clear. In a land where the car is king, the person on foot better get out of the way.

Dan Burden: “All of those roads were built without any consideration for the pedestrian. They weren't an afterthought. They just weren't a thought at all.”

Dan Burden is what you might call a professional pedestrian. He used to be a safety coordinator for the state of Florida. Now he literally walks the country as a pedestrian safety consultant and advocate. Burden says unsafe walking conditions hit poor people the hardest.

Traffic resources Nat'l traffic and road closure information Transportation Web sites by state Los Angeles street traffic information Real-time California traffic maps America's traveler information hotline 2005 urban mobility study

That seems to be the case in Dallas, where Interstate 30 cuts right through town. There the highway separates low cost motels and apartments on one side from discount stores on the other. When residents, many without cars, have to shop for groceries, some make the fateful decision to run across 10 lanes of 60 mile an hour traffic. Over five years, 33 pedestrians died on this highway, putting I-30 on our list of dangerous roads.

Dallas traffic safety officer Debra Guajardo-Raffety gives safety classes for recent immigrants, who suffer a disproportionate number of pedestrian fatalities in Dallas. She teaches a key rule of the road, that while a relatively small percentage of pedestrian crashes happen on interstates, virtually every one of them is fatal.

It may seem like common sense not to run across a freeway, but what about a city street that resembles a freeway? In Arizona's fast-growing Maricopa County, Indian School Road cuts across Phoenix. It's wide, and it's fast. Over 5 years, 27 pedestrians have died there, putting Indian School on our list of most dangerous roads.

Speed also kills on the fabled route 66, named Foothill Boulevard as it passes through San Bernardino County in Southern California. Twenty-five pedestrians were killed here over five years, putting this road on our most dangerous list. It's not hard to see why. The speed limit is 55, and, on one section near the city of Fontana, there's an astounding two miles between traffic signals. But it's not just crossing that's dangerous. Often the lack of sidewalks forces people to walk in the road with the speeding cars.

It's not just these roads. Cities across the country have roads just like them.

But there's a road that proves it's possible to get off the most dangerous list. In the New York City borough of Queens, you'll find Queens Boulevard. In 2001 the Daily News dubbed this the "Boulevard of Death.” Pedestrians were being killed at the rate of one every six weeks. Since then, the city has put up warning signs, re-timed traffic lights, and built fences to discourage jaywalkers. Pedestrian deaths have declined sharply. The city says there was just one last year.  

And even the most deadly roads can be improved. Remember US-19, the worst road in the country?  Well, here's a surprise -- it's getting better, in large part because a county commissioner named Karen Seel decided she had seen enough white crosses. Seel formed a task force to figure out how to fix US-19. Then she proceeded to twist arms at the state legislature and at local businesses alike to raise the money required, $350 million dollars in just her county, Pinellas.

The results benefit both motorists and pedestrians. There are more sidewalks, highly visible signs that let drivers focus on the road, and even new overpasses at major intersections to decrease traffic conflicts. Up the road, in Pasco County, where Billy Uhle was killed in the dark of night, brand new streetlights are about to be turned on. It's too soon to know how many lives these changes might save, but Warren and Nanette Uhle, who lost their only son, say that even one life is enough.

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