Posted in Car Accident on January 7, 2020
Home to more than 700,000 residents, East County San Diego may seem like a quieter alternative to the bustling urban San Diego lifestyle. However, the region has its share of heavy traffic and serious accidents, especially in the busier areas.
We wanted to determine streets with the highest amount of car crashes, so we worked with local data firm 1Point21 Interactive to complete a geospatial analysis of intersections with at least 6 total crashes from 2010-2016.
From that, we were able to map out the intersections in East County with the highest volume of crashes in the seven-year span.
| wdt_ID | Road 1 | Road 2 | City | Crashes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cuyamaca St | Mission Gorge Rd | Santee | 27 |
| 2 | Mission Gorge Rd | Rt 125 | Santee | 23 |
| 3 | Fletcher Pkwy | Jackson Dr | La Mesa | 20 |
| 4 | Cuyamaca St | Rt 52 | Santee | 18 |
| 5 | Massachusetts Av | Rt 94 | Lemon Grove | 17 |
| 6 | N Magnolia Av | Rt 52 | Santee | 16 |
| 7 | Baltimore Dr | Fletcher Pkwy | La Mesa | 15 |
| 8 | Broadway | Lemon Grove Av | Lemon Grove | 14 |
| 9 | Johnson | Madison | El Cajon | 14 |
| 10 | Mollison | Park | El Cajon | 13 |
El Cajon, the largest city in East County, ranked first, with 24 high-crash intersections. These accounted for 195 total crashes.
The intersection at Johnson & Madison had the highest amount of crashes, and the only intersection from El Cajon to be in the top ten of East County overall.
Magnolia Avenue in particular seems to be a hotbed for collisions. The street includes high-crash intersections at Lexington (12), Madison (11), Fletcher Parkway (10), and Washington (6) – all within a 2-mile range of each other.
Santee not only had the highest number of total crashes (203 across 19 intersections), but also had three of the top five intersections on our list. The top two both occurred on Mission Gorge Road – #1 occurred at Cuyamaca Street, while #2 happened at the end of CA Route 125. Both intersections were just 1.1 miles from each other.
In general, Mission Gorge Road had a large portion of high-crash-volume intersections – 7 of 19 occurred on the major road, and account for 44 percent of the crashes in Santee.
La Mesa tallied just as many high-crash intersections as Santee, but had considerably lower total crashes at these locations. The intersection at Fletcher Parkway and Jackson Drive had the most crashes with 20, while the intersection of Fletcher and Baltimore Drive less than a mile away ranked second with 15 crashes. Both are considered some of the busiest intersections in La Mesa.
Interestingly, other frequently traveled roads such as Grossmont Center Drive were not on the top of the list – the highest, at Grossmont and Murray, ticked 8 crashes. Despite being a major through road for a large-scale shopping center and bustling medical facilities, Grossmont Center generally recorded less crashes than intersections dotting other parts of town.
Lemon Grove had the least high-crash volume intersections, with 10 locations accounting for 97 total crashes in the southern East County city.
The intersection at Massachusetts and CA Route 94 had the most crashes, with 17, followed closely by the Broadway/Lemon Grove Ave and Broadway/Massachusetts Ave intersections.
In fact, Broadway and Massachusetts Avenue make up the majority of notable intersections within Lemon Grove. Those involving both streets account for 60% of intersections in Lemon Grove, and more than 60 crashes.
