Lists of “Omaha’s worst intersections” circulate every year, and most are built on guesswork or on a single year of fender-benders. This page uses only official data: the City of Omaha’s Vision Zero Action Plan and annual report, the City’s fatal crash records, the regional planning agency’s safety plan, and the Nebraska Department of Transportation. Where I have sorted or added up the City’s numbers myself, I say so. Then it turns to what matters if you were hurt at one of these places: who is at fault under Nebraska law, how it gets proved, and when the City itself can be responsible.
How Many People Are Hurt on Omaha Streets?
The Vision Zero plan studied ten years of crashes on Omaha’s non-freeway streets, 2011 through 2020. It counted 261 people killed and 4,456 injured, which it summarizes as five people seriously injured every week and one death every ten days. The number of fatal crashes per year doubled over that decade, from 15 to 30.
It has not improved since. The City’s 2025 Vision Zero annual report states: “In 2025, there were 289 life altering crashes resulting in 252 people who were seriously injured and 37 who were killed.” Of the 2025 deaths, 34 percent were speed related, 34 percent involved an impaired driver, and 61 percent of the vehicle occupants killed were not wearing seat belts. Counting freeways as well, the City’s fatal crash records show 48 fatal crashes and 52 deaths in 2024, the worst year in the data, and 41 fatal crashes in 2025.
For scale, the Nebraska Department of Transportation’s most recent published county figures, for 2020, show 9,037 crashes in Douglas County in a single year, 3,219 of them with injuries, and 4,626 people hurt. Sarpy County added another 2,067 crashes.
The High Injury Network: Where the Serious Crashes Concentrate
The City’s central finding is that serious crashes are not spread evenly. A small set of streets, which the plan calls the High Injury Network, carries almost half of them.
| Vision Zero plan, 2011–2020 | Share of Omaha | Share of fatal and serious-injury crashes |
|---|---|---|
| High Injury Network streets | 135.4 miles, 6.6% of street miles | 1,351 crashes, 48% |
| “Priority” streets within it | 46.5 miles, 2.3% | 619 crashes, 22% |
| High Injury Intersections | 69 intersections, 0.5% | 301 crashes, 19% of intersection crashes |
| “Priority” intersections within them | 25 intersections, 0.2% | 132 crashes, 8% |
The pattern held in 2025: “49% of all KSI crashes in 2025 happened on the High Injury Network, which represents only 6.6% of Omaha roads.” (KSI is the plan’s shorthand for crashes in which someone was killed or seriously injured.) The corridors the City has put under study are Northwest Radial Highway, Ames Avenue, the urban core, 13th Street and West Maple Road, and the plan notes that the heaviest concentration of crashes is east of 72nd Street.
Which Omaha Intersections Have the Most Deaths and Serious Injuries?
The plan’s appendix lists the projects the City intends to build, and for each location it gives the number killed and seriously injured over the ten-year study period. The City did not publish that table as a ranking, so read the list below with three cautions: the counts measure how many, not how likely, so busy intersections rise to the top; it is a project list, not a census of every intersection; and several of these locations have since been rebuilt. Sorted by the City’s own counts, these are the intersections with eight or more people killed or seriously injured in 2011–2020:
| Intersection | Killed | Seriously injured |
|---|---|---|
| N. 30th St. & Sorensen Pkwy. | 0 | 10 |
| N. 108th St. & W. Maple Rd. | 0 | 10 |
| Northwest Radial Hwy. & Hamilton St. | 0 | 10 |
| Saddle Creek Rd. & Leavenworth St. | 2 | 7 |
| S. 29th St. & St. Mary’s Ave. | 0 | 9 |
| S. 120th St. & W. Center Rd. | 0 | 9 |
| S. 60th St. & Grover St. | 0 | 9 |
| N. 42nd St. & Ames Ave. | 1 | 7 |
| S. 42nd St. & Grover St. | 1 | 7 |
| 72nd St. & Grover St. | 1 | 7 |
| N. 147th St. & W. Maple Rd. (signal work completed) | 1 | 7 |
| 72nd St. & Blondo St. (project completed) | 0 | 8 |
| L St. & S. 24th St. (project completed) | 0 | 8 |
The deadliest single entry in the City’s table is N. 42nd Street & Sorensen Parkway, with three people killed and four seriously injured.
The corridors are worse than any one corner
The same table shows that the largest numbers belong to stretches of road rather than single intersections:
| Corridor | Killed | Seriously injured |
|---|---|---|
| L Street, 60th to I-80 | 2 | 36 |
| L Street, 24th to 60th | 5 | 31 |
| Dodge Street, Turner Blvd. to 68th | 1 | 33 |
| Maple Street, 72nd to 102nd | 6 | 21 |
| Ames Avenue, 52nd to 72nd | 2 | 23 |
| 72nd Street, Dodge to Military | 2 | 22 |
| West Dodge Road, 66th to 96th | 1 | 21 |
| West Maple Road, 108th to H.W.S. Cleveland Blvd. | 1 | 20 |
Fatal crashes since 2015
Looking only at deaths, and adding my own count from the City’s fatal crash records for January 2015 through September 2026, no Omaha intersection has had more than two fatal crashes. Ten have had two: 144th & Harrison, 132nd & Harrison, 40th & Cuming, 72nd & Cass, 72nd & Pine, 52nd & Farnam, 30th & Kansas, 32nd & Sorensen Parkway, 156th & Pacific, and 114th & West Center. Fatal crashes are scattered; serious-injury crashes are what cluster.
Results in Omaha intersection, pedestrian and collision cases. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every case is different.
Why Omaha Intersections Are Dangerous: The Patterns in the Data
- Traffic signals, not stop signs. The plan found signalized intersections “almost 9x more likely to have a KSI crash occur, compared to stop and roundabout controlled intersections.” Regionally, signalized intersections are 5.5 percent of all intersections and account for 59.3 percent of the serious intersection crashes.
- Angle and left-turn crashes. Among Omaha’s serious vehicle-to-vehicle crashes in 2015–2019, the plan counted 459 angle crashes and 240 left-turn crashes, against 204 rear-end and 51 head-on. Statewide, the Department of Transportation reports that 44 percent of fatal and serious-injury intersection crashes were angle crashes.
- Failure to yield and running the light. Statewide, failure to yield the right-of-way is the most common driver error in serious intersection crashes. In the City’s records of 162 fatal intersection crashes from 2015 through 2025, by my count, failure to yield was marked in 72 and red-light running in 42.
- Speed. “65% of KSI crashes happened where the posted speed limits were 35 mph or higher.” These are the arterials: Dodge, Maple, L, Center, Ames, 72nd.
- Late afternoon and Fridays. The peak hours for serious crashes are 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., and Friday is the worst day.
- Alcohol at night. Alcohol was involved “in over 25% of fatal crashes,” and “66% of alcohol related crashes occur between 7PM-3AM.”
- People on foot. Pedestrians were killed in 38 of the 162 fatal intersection crashes in the City’s records. The five-year average for pedestrian deaths rose 48 percent over the plan’s study period. See my pedestrian accident page.
None of this is unique to Omaha. The Federal Highway Administration reports that “each year roughly one–quarter of traffic fatalities and about one–half of all traffic injuries in the United States are attributed to intersections.” In Nebraska, intersections account for half of all traffic deaths and serious injuries.
Who Is at Fault in an Intersection Crash? Nebraska’s Right-of-Way Rules
Fault at an intersection starts with the rules of the road, which are statutes.
- Red lights. Traffic facing a steady red “shall stop at a clearly marked stop line” and “shall remain standing until an indication to proceed is shown” (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,123).
- Yellow lights. Traffic “shall stop before entering the nearest crosswalk at the intersection, but if such stop cannot be made in safety, a vehicle may be driven cautiously through the intersection.” Yellow means stop if you safely can, not speed up.
- Dark signals. A signal that is not working “shall be treated as a multi-way stop.”
- Left turns. The turning driver “shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle approaching from the opposite direction which is within the intersection or approaching so close as to constitute an immediate hazard” (§ 60-6,147).
- Stop signs. After stopping, the driver “shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle which has entered the intersection from another highway or which is approaching so closely … as to constitute an immediate hazard.”
- No signal or sign. “The driver of the vehicle on the left shall yield the right-of-way to the vehicle on the right.”
- Crosswalks. Where signals are not in operation, a driver “shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk … by bringing his or her vehicle to a complete stop.”
Fault can be shared, and the split decides the case
Insurers rarely concede an intersection crash. The usual defense is that you were speeding, looked away, or could have avoided it. Under Nebraska’s comparative negligence statute, your own negligence “shall diminish proportionately the amount awarded as damages,” and “if the contributory negligence of the claimant is equal to or greater than the total negligence of all persons against whom recovery is sought, the claimant shall be totally barred from recovery” (§ 25-21,185.09). An insurer that can push your share to half pays nothing. That is why the evidence of who had the light matters so much.
Proving Who Had the Green Light
“I had the green” from both drivers is the most common dispute in these cases. It is resolved with evidence, and most of it is perishable.
- Independent witnesses. A driver waiting at the cross street or a pedestrian on the corner is often the whole case. Names and numbers have to be collected at the scene, because the police report does not always include them.
- Video. Dashcams, business security cameras facing the street, and bus cameras. Many systems record over old footage, and no Nebraska law requires a business to keep it.
- Vehicle data. Modern vehicles record speed and braking in the seconds before a crash.
- Signal timing. How a signal is programmed, including the sequence and length of each phase, can be requested from the City as a public record.
- The physical evidence. Points of impact, crush damage and where the vehicles came to rest tell an engineer who entered the intersection first and how fast.
- Phone records, where distraction is suspected.
I explain how each of these is obtained and preserved in dashcam video, phone records and vehicle data.
When the City or County Shares the Blame
Sometimes the intersection itself is part of the cause: a signal that was dark or mistimed, a stop sign that was down, a sight line blocked by overgrowth. Claims against a city or county are governed by the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, and three rules control them.
- Design decisions are usually protected. The Act exempts “any claim based upon the exercise or performance of or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty … whether or not the discretion is abused,” and separately exempts the plan or design of a road that was approved in advance. Choosing not to install a signal or a turn arrow is generally not something you can sue over.
- Malfunctions are different, if the city knew. A claim for “the malfunction, destruction, or unauthorized removal of any traffic or road sign, signal, or warning device” is barred “unless it is not corrected by the political subdivision responsible within a reasonable time after actual or constructive notice.” So is a claim for a localized defect in the road: the city is liable only if it had “actual or constructive notice of the defect within a reasonable time to allow repair.” Prior complaints and work orders are the evidence.
- The deadline is one year. A written claim must be made to the governing body within one year, long before the four-year deadline for a claim against another driver. The details are in my guide to the Nebraska statute of limitations.
What Actually Makes an Intersection Safer
The data also shows what works. The Federal Highway Administration’s proven countermeasures credit roundabouts with 78 percent fewer fatal and injury crashes when they replace a signal, and 82 percent fewer when they replace a two-way stop. Omaha has its own example: after roundabouts were built at 42nd & Q in 2016, the City reports that “crashes were reduced by 20-40% and severity crashes were decreased by 60%.” The plan recorded no roundabout fatalities in 2015–2019. Dedicated left-turn lanes, longer yellow intervals and a head start for pedestrians before the light turns green all show measured reductions as well. How fault works inside a roundabout is covered in roundabout accident liability.
Beyond Omaha: Bellevue, Papillion, La Vista and Council Bluffs
The regional planning agency’s 2025 safety plan counted crashes that killed or seriously injured someone from 2018 through 2022 across the metro: 1,542 in Omaha, 127 in Council Bluffs, 109 in Bellevue, 46 in Papillion and 29 in La Vista. Its regional High Injury Network is 7 percent of the road miles and 2 percent of the intersections, and carries 72.7 percent of those crashes. A crash on the Iowa side runs on Iowa’s shorter deadline; see the Iowa statute of limitations guide.
If You Were Hurt at an Omaha Intersection
- Get the witnesses’ names before they drive away, and photograph the signal, the signs and the sight lines from each approach.
- Look for cameras on the corners and note the business names the same day.
- Do not argue fault at the scene or accept the other driver’s version. Tell the officer what you saw.
- Get examined, even if you feel fine. Angle crashes produce neck, back and shoulder injuries that surface over days; see my page on whiplash and neck and back injuries.
- If a signal or sign was not working, say so to the officer and report it to the City. That report is part of proving notice.
- Call a lawyer before the video is gone. A preservation letter sent in the first week is worth more than any argument made a year later. The full checklist is in what to do after a car accident in Nebraska.
Data from the City of Omaha Vision Zero Action Plan (2023) and 2025 annual report, the City’s fatal crash records through September 23, 2026, the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency’s Comprehensive Safety Action Plan (2025), the Nebraska Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, read October 3, 2026. Counts labeled as mine are my own tabulations of the City’s published data. A location appearing in this data does not mean a crash there was anyone’s fault.
Your Attorney
Frank Younes
Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most dangerous intersection in Omaha?
No agency publishes an official ranking. In the City’s Vision Zero project list for 2011–2020, the intersections with the most people killed or seriously injured were N. 30th & Sorensen Parkway, N. 108th & West Maple, and Northwest Radial & Hamilton, each with ten, followed by Saddle Creek & Leavenworth with nine.
Which Omaha roads have the most serious crashes?
In the same City data, L Street from 24th to I-80, Dodge Street from Turner Boulevard to 68th, and Maple Street from 72nd to 102nd have the highest counts of people killed or seriously injured.
How many people die in Omaha traffic crashes each year?
The City’s records show 48 fatal crashes and 52 deaths in 2024 and 41 fatal crashes in 2025, including freeways. On city streets alone, 37 people were killed and 252 seriously injured in 2025.
Who is at fault in a left-turn crash in Nebraska?
The turning driver must yield to oncoming traffic that is in the intersection or close enough to be an immediate hazard. Fault can still be shared if the oncoming driver was speeding or ran the light.
What if both drivers say they had the green light?
The dispute is decided by evidence: independent witnesses, video, vehicle data, signal timing records and the physical evidence. If you are found half or more at fault, Nebraska law bars your recovery.
Can I sue the City of Omaha over a dangerous intersection?
Design decisions are generally protected. A malfunctioning signal or a known defect the City failed to fix within a reasonable time can support a claim, and a written claim must be made within one year.
Related Guides
Related pages on the questions that come up next.
Hurt at an Omaha Intersection? The Evidence Does Not Wait.
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