The Sunshine State has so much to offer residence and visitors. Unfortunately traveling around the state, can bring dangerous situations. A Governors Highway Safety Association report paints a complex picture of road traffic dangers in Florida, which is ranked 15th on the list of the most dangerous states in terms of overall traffic safety. In 2022, the state recorded 3,538 road fatalities.
When broken down by cities, three in Florida rank in the top five most dangerous in the U.S. for fatal road traffic accidents: Daytona Beach, Ocala, and Fort Lauderdale. Then you have Volusia County on the Atlantic Coast, which is not only home to Daytona Beach but also the deadliest American large county -with more than 500,000 residents- for drivers, passengers, motorcycle riders, cyclists, and pedestrians.
In the opinion of many road traffic safety researchers and public health specialists, the situation in the Sunshine State is complex because it is affected by a combination of factors such as suburban sprawl, ineffective urban planning, unstoppable traffic growth, dismal public transportation, a high influx of visitors, and misguided enforcement of traffic laws. This resulted in 3,419 fatalities reported by state highway safety regulators in 2023.
With all this in mind, here are the four deadliest roads in Florida:
US-19 Between Hudson and Port Richey
With an average of 5.7 fatal crashes per mile across a distance of about five miles, State Road 55, which is better known as Federal Highway 19 to residents of Pasco County, this main stretch of US-19 rivals I-45 in Houston in terms of how lethal it can be for everyone. It should be noted that this statistic does not include the Alternate US-19 section that runs along the Gulf Coast; that is a considerably safer stretch of highway with lower speed limits and markings to control traffic along the beaches.
Pasco County is notorious in Florida for its high rate of both motor vehicle crashes and accidents involving pedestrians; this is despite being a low-density region located a significant distance away from the Tampa Bay metropolitan region.
US-41 in South Bradenton
This is part of the historic Tamiami Trail, the first major east-west connection between Tampa and Miami, but locals call it Highway 41 as it cuts across Manatee County from north to south. The crash-per-mile rate here is 4.3 for less than five miles. This used to be a mostly quiet suburban road until residential and commercial development began to skyrocket in this part of Manatee County around 2019. Heavy traffic and a faster pace of life are making this road section riskier.
I-95 Across South Florida
Interstate 95 will take you from the Vizcaya Metrorail Station in Miami all the way to the border with Canada, but you must first make it across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, where the rate of fatal road traffic accidents gets higher as you drive north. Things start getting dangerous from Little Haiti to Biscayne Park, then from Fort Lauderdale to Oakland Park, and finally from Boynton Beach to South Palm Beach. As the locals say: “Better take the Turnpike! The expensive tolls make it safer.”
US-90 from Jacksonville Beach to San Marco
Unlike the deadly stretches of road listed above, this one runs from east to west instead of north to south. The fatality rate from the Sans Pareil subdivision to Killarney Shores along US-90 is 3.3 crashes per mile, and this has a lot to do with the chaotic traffic that forms at the intersection of Beach Boulevard and I-295, two of the busiest roads in Jacksonville.
