ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Lake Avenue has been deemed New York’s most dangerous road, according to a recent analysis of National Highway Transportation Safety Administration crash data.

Over the past five years, 10 people have died from crashes on a nearly seven-mile stretch of Lake Avenue.

“I’m not surprised, I try to avoid Lake Avenue on purpose,” Asia Davis said.

Residents and workers in the area have shared their concerns about the frequent accidents on Lake Avenue. Davis mentioned a motorcycle accident and expressed uncertainty about potential solutions.

“The swerving in and out of lanes, how fast people drive. It’s not the best road to travel down. I feel like everybody is in a hurry on Lake Ave,” Davis said. Lindsay Lawyer also commented on the dangerous conditions.

“There was motorcycles that collided with a car–that was further down, but I mean it’s the whole street–it’s dangerous,” Lindsay Lawyer said.

A recent incident involved a stolen car speeding into a gas pump, hitting another car, and crashing into a gate. The analysis by a Denver law firm examined the number of deaths per mile, highlighting Lake Avenue’s high fatality rate due to its short length and number of deadly crashes.

“I saw somebody fully driving on the wrong side of the road, pretty fast. They were going faster than me, and I was on the right side of the street. That was pretty scary,” Lawler said.

Ben Johnson expressed surprise at Lake Avenue’s ranking as the most dangerous road in New York.

“I am shocked to find that this, from hearing what you said it’s the more precarious streets in all of New York State,” Johnson said.

Despite its ranking in New York, Lake Avenue did not make the top 10 list for the most dangerous roads in the country. Pennsylvania State Route 611 took the number one spot.

See the full study below:

New Study Reveals New York’s Deadliest Road

• Monroe County’s Lake Avenue ranks as the most dangerous road in New York, according to a new analysis of NHTSA crash data.
• The road was found to have a rate of 1.46 fatal crashes per mile over the five years analyzed.
• The findings revealed the top 10 most dangerous roads in the U.S., with State Route 611 in Philadelphia County, PA, ranking the deadliest road in America.

Denver accident attorneys at the Law Firm of Jeremy Rosenthal examined National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data over a five-year period, identifying the deadliest roads across the country and the most dangerous in every state. This was determined by identifying the roads with the highest number of fatal traffic accidents per mile. 

New York’s deadliest road by crashes per mile: 

This table shows the most dangerous roads in each of the 50 states, ranked by crashes per mile: 

Methodology: Fatal vehicle crash data were sourced from the NHTSA’s FARS dataset for the years 2018 to 2022. The 182,347 total fatal crashes were geocoded to determine the state and county each accident occurred. Shapefiles from the U.S. Census describing 18 million roads across 3,144 counties were used to determine the closest road to each crash. 

The length of each road was determined by summing the total distance between sequential coordinates within the shapefiles. For each road, the number of crashes, fatalities, vehicles involved, and pedestrians involved were calculated and normalized per mile of road length to ensure a fair comparison between roads of differing lengths. 

Roads were then ranked by their number of crashes per mile, both nationwide, within their state, and within their county. 

Sources: NHTSA FARS – https://www.nhtsa.gov/file-downloads?p=nhtsa/downloads/FARS/2022/National/ U.S. Census – https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/2024/geo/tiger-line-file.html 

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