CHARLOTTE — Fatal crashes in Charlotte are on the rise for the third year in a row with ones that result in serious injuries are at a five-year high, according to the city’s Vision Zero Report.
In an investigation into crash data from fiscal year 2025, Charlotte Department of Transportation’s Vision Zero Report revealed 81 were killed on Charlotte’s roads and 111 sustained serious injuries. However, the total number of crashes across the city decreased from year to year.
Vision Zero refers to a strategy the city adopted in 2018 to get traffic deaths down to zero by 2040.
Sustain Charlotte executive director Shannon Binns is an advocate for getting around without a car and results so far show the city’s efforts are inadequate.
“If anything else in our city was causing over 80 people to die every year, we would consider that an emergency situation,” he said.
Binns said he’s particularly frustrated by the fact that the city knows exactly where the most dangerous areas are.
CDOT mapped out a “high injury network”, which is where 80% of fatal and serious crashes occurred even though the streets make up only 13% of city roads, according to the report.
Take 36th Street and The Plaza for example: A pedestrian was killed there Wednesday evening. The block is marked in deep red on the high injury network as a dangerous area, and the city’s crash portal revealed it was the fifth person killed, including the fourth pedestrian, on that block since 2019.
[ CMPD: Person hit and killed by car in NoDa ]
“What we need to do is come up with an action plan where we focus on those most dangerous streets in our city and apply those resources to making interventions in the design of those streets as quickly as possible,” Binns said.
Kimberly Owens, the District 6 city councilmember, agrees. She said when the Vision Zero Report was made public earlier this month, several constituents reached out to her asking what the city is doing to prevent those crashes and whether funding from the recent 1% sales tax increase could help.
“For me, public safety is not just crime,” she said. “Public safety is also how we get around this city in a manner that enables us all to feel like we’re going to be able to go home at night.”
According to the report, speeding and improper vehicle operation was involved in more than 60% of these serious crashes.
“An accident happening at a slower speed is pretty universally going to be less serious than one happening at a higher speed,” she said.
For its part, the city has been working to lower speeds. The report explains in fiscal year 2025, 82 streets saw lowered speed limits, 35 streets got new speed cushions, and five new pedestrian beacons were added.
Other roads were redesigned, including Matheson Avenue, which saw its lanes reduced five down to three, forcing drivers to slow down and providing more space for cyclists and pedestrians on the sidewalks.
Binns said while he appreciates these measures, not every change has to be that big.
“There are inexpensive treatments that can be done virtually overnight,” he said.
Small changes, such as repainting crosswalks to make them more visible, adding bollards to square turns, and slowing down drivers or improving visibility at intersections by “daylighting” could go a long way.
While Binn hopes additional funding from the 1% for mobility tax can help fund big fixes, he said the city can’t afford to wait for the perfect solution before taking action. He said people are dying now.
“We need to be moving much, much faster,” he said. “We cannot spend a decade or more doing a study or creating a plan for making a street safer.”
Otherwise, Binns said we’ll just see more people opting to drive over walking, biking or using transit, adding more traffic, more pollution and more frustration to our streets.