Where Oakland's traffic crashes concentrate

What the data shows

• Serious crashes are concentrated on a small share of Oakland's streets. The City's 2024 High Injury Network is 8% of streets responsible for 60% of severe and fatal collisions, based on crash data from 2017 to 2021.^[1]
• In 2024, 30 people were killed in traffic in Oakland. 19 of them, about two-thirds, were walking or biking.^[4]
• In 2024, 70% of fatal crashes happened in neighborhoods the City classifies as "High" and "Highest" equity priority, which make up an estimated 36% of Oakland's streets.^[4]
• Among California cities with more than 250,000 people, Oakland ranked 1st of 15 for hit-and-run crashes in 2023. In the state's words, "Number 1 in the rankings is the highest, or 'worst.'"^[5][6]
• From 2021 to 2025, police reported between 2,003 and 2,176 crashes a year in Oakland in which someone was hurt or killed, in our count of the state’s crash records.^[10]
• On city streets, more than a third of injury or fatal crashes in Council Districts 5, 6 and 7 were hit-and-runs, against about one in five in Districts 1 and 4 (2021–2025, our count).^[10][11]

Our analysis of state crash records

We counted every crash in the City of Oakland in the California Highway Patrol’s statewide crash database, the California Crash Reporting System (CCRS), for 2021 through 2025.^[10] These are our own counts, made with a script anyone can rerun. Each table says how it was counted, the methods box covers the rules and limits, and every table is in the data files.

What stands out

• Police reported 29,977 crashes in Oakland from 2021 through 2025. 10,532 of them injured or killed someone: between 2,003 and 2,176 a year. The provisional 2025 count, 2,090, was above 2021’s 2,003.^[10]
• 37.9% of all reported crashes were hit-and-runs, and 27.4% of crashes with someone hurt or killed.^[10]
• On city streets, the hit-and-run share of injury or fatal crashes was 37.6% to 38.4% in Council Districts 5, 6 and 7, and 19.6% and 19.5% in Districts 1 and 4.^[10][11]
• 11 of the 25 intersections in our top-25 table are on International Boulevard, and 19 are in Districts 5, 6 and 7.^[10]
• Injury or fatal crashes involving a bicyclist rose from 89 in 2021 to 142 in 2025.^[10]
• People on foot were 65 of the 188 people killed in these records, and 1,249 of the 13,905 people killed or injured.^[10]
• More injury crashes started between 5 and 6 p.m. than in any other hour (772 in five years). Between midnight and 3 a.m. there were 203 such crashes on Saturdays and 206 on Sundays over the five years, against 82 on an average weekday.^[10]

Crashes by year, 2021–2025

Source: our count of CCRS crash records, City of Oakland, 2021–2025.^[10] An injury or fatal crash has at least one person injured or killed. City streets and freeways are split by the CCRS freeway flag and the road name (I-80, I-580, I-880, I-980, SR-13, SR-24 and their ramps). Data: crashes-by-year.csv.

Who was involved

Injury or fatal crashes with at least one pedestrian, bicyclist or motorcycle among the parties. A crash with a pedestrian and a bicyclist counts in both columns. “Motorcycle” includes motor-driven cycles.^[10] Data: injury-crashes-by-mode.csv.

People killed or seriously injured, 2021–2025, by the injured person’s type in CCRS; drivers and passengers of a motorcycle count as motorcyclists. “Seriously injured” is the CCRS injury level “suspected serious injury.”^[10] Data: people-by-mode.csv.

Hurt in one of these crashes? What applies on foot or on a bike and on a motorcycle.

Hour of day and day of week

Injury or fatal crashes, 2021–2025 combined, by the hour they started and the day of the week as written on the report. Darker cells have more crashes. The hours just after midnight on Saturday and Sunday are late Friday and Saturday nights.

Source: our count of CCRS crash records.^[10] Data: injury-crashes-by-hour-and-day.csv.

By council district

Injury or fatal crashes on city streets, 2021–2025, by the City’s 2022 council districts.^[11] The districts were drawn to have nearly equal populations: the City’s redistricting data lists 61,628 to 65,401 residents per district.^[13] Freeway crashes are left out.

How crashes were placed: Oakland Police reports in CCRS carry no map coordinates, so we placed each one at the point where the two streets written on the report meet in the City’s street centerline file.^[12] Crashes with officer-recorded coordinates were placed by those. “Serious injury,” “Pedestrian” and “Bicyclist” count the crashes with a seriously injured person, a pedestrian or a bicyclist. 7,045 of 7,534 city-street injury or fatal crashes (93.5%) could be placed. As a check, the 197 city-street crashes that have both coordinates and two street names were placed both ways: 187 (94.9%) landed in the same district. Data: injury-crashes-by-council-district.csv.

The 25 intersections with the most injury crashes

Method: city-street injury or fatal crashes, 2021–2025, whose report names two streets and puts the crash at the intersection or within 100 feet of the cross street. “Serious injury,” “Pedestrian” and “Bicyclist” count the crashes with a seriously injured person, a pedestrian or a bicyclist. Street names are standardized (“AV” and “AVE”, “BL” and “BLVD”, obvious misspellings). Ties share a rank. The last column marks the 6 that are also on the City’s list of 20 High Injury Network intersections, which used 2017–2021 crashes.^[3][10] Data: top-25-intersections.csv.

Hit-and-run by year

CCRS marks a crash as a felony (injury) or misdemeanor (property damage) hit-and-run. Share is hit-and-run crashes divided by all crashes in the group.^[10] Data: hit-and-run-by-year.csv.

Four questions we answered from the same records

• International Blvd logged about a third fewer injury crashes in the year after its quick-build. The rest of Oakland held steady.
• In Oakland’s Council Districts 5, 6 and 7, more than a third of injury crashes are hit-and-runs. In the rest of the city, about one in four are.
• Oakland’s 18 speed-camera blocks logged about 19 injury crashes a year before the cameras: too few to measure a change yet.
• The 87 Oakland intersections with the most injury crashes had about one in five of the serious crashes at intersections in 2025 and 2026. More than half happened at corners with little crash history.

Neighborhoods and nearby cities

The same counts for the neighborhoods and nearby cities our patients come from. Oakland neighborhoods use the City of Oakland’s neighborhood map: Montclair is its Montclair and Montclair Business neighborhoods, West Oakland its W neighborhoods, Fruitvale its F neighborhoods, and East Oakland its S, F, CE and E neighborhoods (so East Oakland includes Fruitvale). Alameda, Piedmont, San Leandro and Emeryville are the city named on the report. A city’s years are shorter when the state file is missing months of its police reports. About 1 in 10 Oakland city-street injury crashes could not be placed in a neighborhood, so Oakland neighborhood counts are a floor.

Data: areas-summary.csv, one by-year and one intersection file per area, and methods.txt (section “Run 49”). Counts from 1 to 4 are shown as “<5”.

Traffic deaths by year

From the City's traffic fatality tracker, run by OakDOT and the Oakland Police Department.^[7]

Source: City of Oakland, Monitoring Traffic Deaths in Oakland.^[7] The City notes that two deaths in 2025 from crashes in earlier years, more than 30 days after the crash, were not counted in the 2025 total, "consistent with state data reporting standards." The page shows no last-updated date and says it is updated on an ongoing basis; 2026 is a partial year.

Who was killed, 2019–2024

Source: City of Oakland, 2024 Safe Oakland Streets Annual Informational Report, Table 1 (report dated April 14, 2025).^[4] The report's "other motorized user" deaths were people on e-scooters, an ATV, a mini bike and a motorized scooter.

Where fatal crashes happen, by neighborhood type

The same report states: "In 2024, 70% of the fatal crashes in Oakland occurred in 'High' and 'Highest' Priority neighborhoods, which make up an estimated 36% of Oakland's streets." The City's priority levels factor in the share of low-income residents, communities of color, seniors and people with disabilities.^[4] The fatality tracker adds that "68% of the High Injury Network falls in High and Highest Priority Equity Communities."^[7]

The countywide picture for walking and biking

The Alameda County Transportation Commission's September 2024 report uses collision data from 2018 through 2022. It states: "The total mileage of the 2024 Active Transportation HIN is 334 miles, which accounts for about 8% of the countywide street network. Approximately 70% of all injury pedestrian and bike collisions occurred on the 2024 HIN."^[8] Its longest corridors that include Oakland:

Source: Alameda CTC, High-Injury Network and Proactive Safety Network Report, September 2024, Table 5.^[8] Mileage for multi-city corridors is the whole corridor, not only the Oakland portion. This is the county's active-transportation network, a different map from the City's HIN.

References

1. City of Oakland, Department of Transportation. "2024 High Injury Network (HIN)." Updated May 2024; crash data 2017–2021. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safety/2024-High-Injury-Network-HIN
2. City of Oakland. 2024 HIN segments table (xlsx), linked from the page above. https://cao-94612.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/documents/HIN_2024_Segments.xlsx
3. City of Oakland. 2024 HIN intersections table (xlsx), linked from the page above. https://cao-94612.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/documents/HIN_2024_Intersections.xlsx
4. City of Oakland. "2024 Safe Oakland Streets (SOS) Annual Informational Report," Public Works and Transportation Committee, dated April 14, 2025 (meeting May 13, 2025). https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/transportation/documents/traffic-safety/safe-oakland-streets/2024-sos-report.pdf
5. California Office of Traffic Safety. "Oakland 2023" crash rankings. https://www.ots.ca.gov/rankings/oakland-2023
6. California Office of Traffic Safety. "Crash Rankings" (methodology and caveats). https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings/
7. City of Oakland. "Monitoring Traffic Deaths in Oakland." https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safety/Safe-Oakland-Streets/Monitoring-Traffic-Deaths-in-Oakland
8. Alameda County Transportation Commission. "High-Injury Network and Proactive Safety Network Report," September 2024. https://www.alamedactc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/HIN_PSN_Report.pdf
9. UC Berkeley SafeTREC, Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS). "SWITRS" data notes. https://tims.berkeley.edu/help/crashdata/switrs.php
10. California Highway Patrol. "California Crash Reporting System (CCRS)," California Open Data Portal. Crashes, Parties and InjuredWitnessPassengers files, 2021–2025, downloaded October 23, 2026. https://data.ca.gov/dataset/ccrs
11. City of Oakland (OaklandGIS). "Council District 2022 Revised," districts adopted February 23, 2022. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=b7e06c587b544d8187fe7a0d508f2078
12. City of Oakland. "OaklandStreets" street centerlines (used to place crashes at the intersection named on the report). https://gismaps.oaklandca.gov/server/rest/services/OaklandStreets/FeatureServer/0
13. City of Oakland (OaklandGIS). "CouncilDistricts_NEW," 2022 districts with redistricting population figures. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=25c1b601d9a84dd7a164a8d095d2712d

Sources 1–9 accessed September 23, 2026; sources 10–13 accessed October 23, 2026. If a source updates, the figures above may no longer match it; the source is authoritative. Corrections are welcome.