Dangerous driving: Las Vegans' need for speed has deadly outcomes on the road

“If you’re driving successful Las Vegas, and the airy turns green? Wait.”

Local performer Amy Saunders, aka Miss Behave, drops this enactment successful her show-opening monologues, wherever it ever gets a brittle, self-aware laughter due to the fact that we’ve been connected each broadside of that intersection. We’ve been successful near-misses with drivers flying done reddish lights astatine precocious speeds; we’ve blown done those signals ourselves, traveling astatine speeds good implicit the posted limit; we’ve been the pedestrians crossing those streets, anxiously wondering if we are disposable to our neighbors successful their 5,000-pound machines; and we’ve been victims of collisions, learning the information down that terrifying gag successful the hardest way.

According to a study issued by the Nevada Department of Public Safety’s Zero Fatalities initiative, Nevada suffered 381 postulation fatalities successful 2025, with Clark County unsocial accounting for 237 of those. Even though that fig represents a decently sized falloff—there were 420 traffic-related fatalities statewide successful 2024, a gruesome grounds high—it’s inactive a large capable fig to springiness 1 intermission erstwhile the airy turns green, and large capable for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to support a database of the 50 astir accident-prone intersections successful the Las Vegas Valley, drawn from each of its 10 country commands.

Published successful January, Metro’s database of “top clang intersections” includes corridors touched by construction, similar Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway, which is receiving aboveground infrastructure improvements, and Charleston and Decatur Boulevards, which is getting underground inferior work. It includes tourist-heavy intersections similar Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, and the mostly local-use intersection of Desert Inn Road and Eastern Avenue. It’s got mega-busy intersections—Rainbow Boulevard and Flamingo, each 1 9 lanes across—and immoderate intersections truthful obscure, similar Lamb Boulevard and Colorado Avenue, that I had to look them up successful Google Maps.

All these intersections person 3 things successful common: cars, pedestrians and crashes, and capable of each that Metro allied with different instrumentality enforcement agencies for the Joining Forces Speed Awareness Campaign earlier this year. “It’s a precedence for Sheriff [Kevin] McMahill,” says Officer Robert Wicks with Metro’s nationalist accusation office. “We’ve been hitting this connection hard for the past 3 months.”

The connection is simply a comparatively elemental one: dilatory down good earlier you adjacent participate 1 of those intersections. Speeding increases the imaginable of losing power of your vehicle, increases your stopping region and could marque imaginable collisions deadly. That means keeping to posted velocity limits and slowing down successful bedewed weather. “Even astatine 45 miles per hour, your car won’t halt earlier entering the crosswalk connected the different broadside of the intersection,” Wicks says. “Everyone should thrust defensively; that’s the champion proposal astatine immoderate time. And permission your location 5 to 10 minutes earlier.”

Metro is afloat invested successful the three-pronged attack authorities and section agencies are taking to reduce—hopefully eliminate—traffic-related fatalities, keeping those numbers falling from their 2024 high. “We’re addressing this done what we telephone the Three Es—enforcement, acquisition and engineering,” says Wicks, adding that the archetypal E is an implicit given: “There’s nary much leeway. We’re penning citations.

We’re going to commencement holding radical accountable.”

That leaves acquisition and engineering. The erstwhile is astir getting america to alteration our ways; we’ll get backmost to that 1 successful a minute. But the second raises lingering questions astir roads successful Nevada, and those successful different Western prima loop states with a precocious fig of postulation fatalities: wherefore bash we velocity successful the archetypal place?Why are our roads truthful dangerous, some for those successful cars and connected foot?

“One fatality is mode excessively many, not conscionable arsenic a state, but arsenic a nation,” says Lacey Tisler, main postulation information technologist astatine the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT). “And that’s the crushed I person a job. That’s the crushed we spouse with Metro, and truthfully, that’s the crushed we’re having this conversation, due to the fact that the extremity is zero fatalities. And everybody needs to beryllium involved, together.”

I’ve written astir the Valley’s postulation issues galore times before, adjacent though I’m not an technologist and astir of what I cognize astir roadworthy infrastructure comes from interviewing civic engineers and listening to geeky influencers, similar 99% Invisible podcast big Roman Mars and CityNerd’s Ray Delahanty. I’m compelled to bash it due to the fact that my clip surviving successful Vegas is breached up with a 10-year stint successful Seattle, during which I got precocious connected the full thought of the alleged “15-minute city.” That’s a metropolis wherever astir everything you request to live—work, school, food, entertainment, civilization and enactment for a steadfast life—is wrong a 15-minute, non-motorized reach.

Las Vegas is not a 15-minute city. Las Vegas is Radiator Springs, the godforsaken municipality from the Disney-Pixar Cars movies—a metropolis built by machines, for machines. People don’t beryllium successful that world—only contention cars, trucks, sedans, tractors, occurrence trucks and combatant jets with windshield eyeballs and literal, toothy chrome grills. (It’s terrifying.) Our metropolis was built retired aft World War II, erstwhile everybody and their member bought a car. As a result, Vegas’ streets are excessively wide, which encourages drivers to speed. Our sidewalks are skinny and often incorporate obstacles—light poles, zap boxes. Our metropolis blocks are long, which encourages jaywalking. And the parking tons successful beforehand of our supermarkets, container stores and portion malls are wholly excessively big.

Delahanty calls these wide, level thoroughfares “stroads,” a portmanteau of “streets” and “roads.” Las Vegas has small but stroads, and they’re astir apt the crushed you’ve ne'er walked to the supermarket. Even if you unrecorded wrong walking region of one, you should beryllium reluctant to transverse an unshaded nine-lane roadworthy and ocean-sized parking batch successful 90-degree upwind to store there.

“That comes down to drivers who ne'er question extracurricular of their climate-controlled couch,” says Erin Breen, with a rueful chuckle. Breen, manager of UNLV’s Road Equity Alliance Project, advocates for safer roads successful respective nonrecreational capacities, including arsenic manager of Ped Safe Vegas, a pedestrian information acquisition group. When she speaks to groups, she asks if radical purposely parkland arsenic acold from the doors of the supermarket arsenic possible, trying to get drivers to place with pedestrians.

“Occasionally 1 oregon 2 radical rise their hands and I say, ‘Oh, caller car?’ oregon ‘Getting those steps in?’, due to the fact that that’s who parks successful the corner,” she jokes. “Everybody other you cognize slams connected their brakes the 2nd they spot a adjacent parking spot. But those precise aforesaid radical person zero empathy for the folks that we’re asking to locomotion that agelong metropolis block.”

Breen doesn’t deliberation intersections are needfully the main problem. “As it pertains to susceptible roadworthy users, unless you’re a motorcyclist, intersections are not wherever bicyclists and pedestrians die. They dice mid-corridor astir often,” she says, talking astir the radical killed jaywalking crossed our too-long metropolis blocks. “It’s not the intersection oregon the corridor. It’s however we physique our streets.”

“Enormous roads bash promote speeding behavior. In general, the thoroughfare grid systems that we spot retired westbound each acquisition varying levels of pervasive speeding,” says NDOT’s Tisler. “And that’s not conscionable precocious speeds, [it’s] the systemic speeding, going 5, 10, 15 miles an hr [over the limit], that we spot everyplace successful a grid system. … As vehicles change, our systems aren’t changing. There’s taste impatience—the mode our brains respond to velocity and the different cars astir us.”

The bully quality is that Southern Nevada is opening to instrumentality the steps indispensable to calm our streets. Maryland Parkway is getting wider sidewalks and a dedicated lane for autobus accelerated transit, bicycles and the steadily expanding fig of e-scooters and e-bikes connected our streets. (Tisler notes Nevada Assembly Concurrent Resolution 4, passed during past year’s peculiar legislative session, directed the Joint Interim Standing Committee connected the Judiciary to survey caller regulations for e-vehicles: “What are the rules astir them? What are the abstraction requirements? How bash they acceptable into the [traffic] system?”)

And the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and the City of Henderson are presently moving unneurotic to tame the behemoth that is Boulder Highway, which is specified the stereotypical “stroad” that the CityNerd YouTube transmission devoted an full occurrence to it. (Search for “Stroad Bingo.” Delahanty fills retired his full card: “Ginormous parking lots,” “excessive posted speeds,” “tight curbs/no sidewalks” and excessively galore more.) The Reimagine Boulder Highway task promises a simplification of postulation lanes, reduced posted speeds, mid-block pedestrian crossings with postulation signals, buffeted motorcycle lanes, dedicated autobus lanes, improved pedestrian entree and more.

Engineers commonly telephone this right-sizing a “road diet,” and it’s a delicious indulgence pursuing a repast of orangish postulation cones. Main and Commerce streets underwent roadworthy diets a fewer years back, and portion it sucked astatine the time, the pedestrian throngs present packing the 18b Arts District connected weekends talk to its success. It’s not conscionable Vegas that’s right-sizing, it’s the full country—adopting electrical vehicles that volition yet parkland themselves, utilizing rideshare and nationalist transit successful expanding numbers, and discovering the elemental joys of walking oregon e-biking from A to B. If you had told maine 20 years agone that the City of Las Vegas would person a palmy motorcycle stock program, I’d person said you were nuts.

It’s imaginable to marque Radiator Springs into a spot wherever humans are welcome. We conscionable request to beryllium diligent arsenic the engineers bash their thing, Breen says.

“Everything comes down to the idiosyncratic that’s utilizing the street. And arsenic soon arsenic they perceive words similar roadworthy diet, they spell into a implicit panic, due to the fact that they deliberation it volition impact their commute for the clip that it’s nether construction, and I’m not going to prevarication astir that, it perfectly volition impact their commute.” (Breen sympathizes with maine erstwhile I notation that I unrecorded connected Maryland Parkway.) “But wherever we disagree is connected what the results of those improvements are. We’re not taking distant capacity; we’re taking distant from those oh-so-comfortable-to-speed-in question lanes that are 14 feet wide oregon better, making them much constrictive truthful that you’re not truthful comfy speeding, and past taking the other abstraction that we summation and giving it to radical who question by foot, oregon bike, oregon now, arsenic it turns out, by [electric] mobility device. When roads are built for radical and not for cars, those roads are safer for each roadworthy user.”

“These are generational changes,” Tisler says “They’ll determination quicker erstwhile the assemblage tin travel together. It’s precise hard to thrust alteration erstwhile you’re alone.”

Put that way, “leave the location earlier” doesn’t dependable similar a curse. There’s a communal saying among urbanists, a benignant of infrastructure-geek koan: “You’re not stuck successful traffic. You are traffic.” Engineering volition lone instrumentality america truthful acold successful making the roads safer for everyone. We request to re-educate ourselves, to calm ourselves, to dilatory ourselves. And possibly someday, erstwhile the airy turns green, Las Vegas’ drivers won’t person that infinitesimal of existential doubt.

“There is worth to driving the velocity limit,” Tisler says. “I would situation everyone to instrumentality their clip getting from constituent A to constituent B. Watch their thrust and ticker the situation they’re in. Get funny astir the road, instrumentality your clip and consciousness and conscionable bespeak connected however antithetic it feels than erstwhile you’re rushing, and bespeak connected your question clip differences. Take it arsenic a challenge, and we tin proceed to person a information conversation.”

Las Vegas Metro’s most dangerous intersections

In January, Metro issued a database of its 50 “top clang intersections,” drawn from its 10 country commands. These are intersections that spot a disproportionate fig of accidents wherever Metro issues citations for speeding 11-20 MPH implicit the posted limit, moving a reddish airy oregon driving without a valid license, registration oregon insurance. These are the top-listed intersections from each of those country commands. Go carefully.

• Charleston and Valley View

• Desert Inn and Paradise

• Eastern and Stewart

• Blue Diamond and Durango

• Eastern and Tropicana

• Lamb and Lake Mead Blvd.

• Cheyenne and Tenaya

• Charleston and Durango

• Charleston and Nellis

• Decatur and Flamingo

(source: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, January 2026) 

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