Dangerous San Jose Intersections Studied, Rated By Legal Team

SAN JOSE, CA — Traffic crashes are a leading cause of injury and death in San Jose. While collisions are a fact of life in major metropolitan areas, a legal research team studied San Jose's intersections to see where drivers are at a higher risk of being involved in crash.

What intersections are the most dangerous?

That's the prevailing question San Jose legal firm Henshaw and Henry took on in order to as company representatives said they "want to make a positive impact on community safety in our city."

So the firm deployed data visualization and analysis methods to come up with its results from five years of California Highway Patrol traffic collision data combing through 2 million records, because if anything, this is the Silicon Valley.

The findings were startling: From 2013 through 2017, there were nearly 8,000 intersection-related crashes in San Jose, killing 103 people injuring 10,118 more.

After isolating all intersection crashes during this time period, each intersection was measured by using a specific crash index score. This is a weighted score that takes crash volume and severity of injuries into account for each crossing. The findings were such that 65 intersections scoring 50 or higher generated nearly five times the average among the 4,471 intersections where a crash occurred.

What was the worst culprit?

McLaughlin Avenue at Story Road topped the list of the worst intersections in San Jose with 34 crashes recorded in that five-year timeframe in the Ferrari Pinoche neighborhood. The second worst came in as the Almaden Expressway at Blossom Hill Road in South San Jose with 18 crashes. The third worst offender experienced one fatality among 12 crashes at the intersection of the Capital Expressway and Ocala Avenue in the Alum Rock zone east of the city.

Of five regions within the metro area, that neighborhood led the way with 1,042 crashes and 1,399 injuries across 592 intersections; followed by Central San Jose with 836 crashes; South San Jose with 762, which also has the unfortunate distinction of seeing the most fatalities with 19 total deaths during the five-year study period. Edenvale came in fourth with 619 crashes at its intersections; and Evergreen at fifth with 416 crashes.

The full study may be read.