Charlotte has spent years trying to make its streets safer. In 2018, the city launched its Vision Zero campaign with an ambitious goal: eliminate traffic deaths by 2040. But for the people walking along Charlotte’s roads, the latest numbers show that the danger remains deeply uneven.
Between 2020 and 2024, 131 people died while walking in Charlotte. Those deaths were not even spread out across the city; in fact, a few specific roads accounted for a majority of those fatalities. Nearly half, 61 deaths, or 46.6% of the total, occurred on just 10 roads in Charlotte, highlighting the deadliest streets in Charlotte and the increased pedestrian risks.
That concentration is one of the clearest findings in a five-year analysis of pedestrian fatalities conducted by Shane Smith Law. Looking beyond the overall death toll, the analysis examines where crashes happened, when pedestrian deaths were most common, the vehicles and behaviors involved, and who was most often affected.
The picture that emerges is not just a general problem of safety; the concentration on these 10 roads shows that there are some patterns that are leading to these very real deaths. These are recognizable patterns that are costing the lives of real people: particular roads where deaths repeatedly occur, particular times of year when risk rises, and circumstances that appear again and again in fatal crashes. And in 2024, those patterns became harder to ignore.
Charlotte’s Pedestrian Deaths Took a Sharp Increase in 2024
Pedestrian deaths fluctuated quite a bit from year to year when looking at the five years of 2020 to 2024, with 2023 marking a notable low for Charlotte. However, 2024 was a year where things changed quite a bit. That year, Charlotte recorded 34 pedestrian deaths, compared with 23 in 2023, marking a stark 47.8% increase in only one year.
The state of North Carolina recorded 264 pedestrian deaths in 2024, up 15.3% from the previous year, while Mecklenburg County rose from 24 to 36 deaths, a 50% increase.
Charlotte’s 2024 total was also roughly 30% higher than its own five-year average. The city’s share of all pedestrian deaths in North Carolina reached 12.9%, its highest share during the five-year period.
In 2024, on a national level, there were 2.08 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people. North Carolina’s rate was higher, at 2.39 per 100,000 people. And then, Charlotte’s was even higher: 3.76 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people.
And so after looking at the population-adjusted data, Charlotte’s pedestrian death toll cannot simply be explained by its population size. Even when population is taken into account, the city’s rate remained above both the state and national pedestrian death rates. That raises a more important question than simply how many people died: Where are these deaths happening and what is causing them?
Ten Roads Account for Nearly Half of Charlotte’s Pedestrian Deaths
Look at Charlotte’s pedestrian deaths by road, and the citywide problem begins to look much more concentrated. Approximately 60 roads appeared in the pedestrian-fatality data between 2020 and 2024. Yet just 10 roads accounted for 61 of the city’s 131 deaths. That means nearly one out of every two pedestrians who died in Charlotte during the five-year period was killed on one of those 10 roads.
I-85 stands apart from the rest. It was associated with 13 pedestrian deaths, almost 10% of Charlotte’s entire five-year total. I-485 followed with nine deaths, while I-77 recorded five. Together, those three interstates accounted for 27 deaths, or 20.6% of all pedestrian fatalities in the city during the period.
There is an important distinction here. Pedestrians generally should not be walking along limited-access interstates in the first place. Their presence in fatal-crash data can point to a different kind of safety problem, one involving access, barriers, crossings and the places where pedestrians and high-speed traffic unexpectedly meet. The rest of the list paints a different picture.
The Plaza, East Independence Boulevard, Beatties Ford Road, Albemarle Road, South Tryon Street, Brookshire Boulevard and North Graham Street are major surface roads carrying substantial amounts of traffic. Many have multiple lanes, wide crossings and higher speeds, conditions that can make crossing on foot more difficult.
Taken together, these roads tell a story about concentration. Charlotte does not have 131 completely separate pedestrian-safety problems. A substantial portion of the city’s fatality burden is tied to these few roads, and that’s extremely important to note.
The Risk Rises as the Year Gets Darker
Pedestrian deaths do not occur at the same rate throughout the year. Nationally, 2024 followed a pronounced seasonal pattern. June had the fewest pedestrian deaths, with 460. The number then climbed through the fall, reaching 695 in October, 732 in November, and 685 in December. November was the deadliest month nationwide, with 272 more pedestrian deaths than June, a 59% increase.
North Carolina followed a similar trajectory. The state recorded just 12 pedestrian deaths in July, compared with 30 in October, a 150% increase.
Charlotte’s numbers were smaller, but the same broad pattern appeared. The city recorded as few as one pedestrian death in March and as many as five in December, its highest monthly total of 2024.
The reasons may be familiar: fewer daylight hours, more travel during darkness and changing traffic patterns around the holidays. But the significance of the numbers is simpler. A pedestrian’s risk is not constant throughout the year.
The fall and early winter months repeatedly stand out at the national, state and local levels. That makes seasonality another piece of the larger pattern, and another reason a citywide death count alone does not tell the whole story.
The Circumstances Behind the Deaths
The data also offers a closer look at what was recorded in the crashes themselves. Among Charlotte’s 131 confirmed pedestrian deaths between 2020 and 2024, alcohol involvement appeared more often than speeding or distracted driving among the factors recorded in the dataset.
A driver with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher was involved in 26 crashes, or roughly one in five pedestrian deaths. When the data included any measurable alcohol in the driver’s system, the number rose to 35 crashes, about 27% of the total. Another 15 crashes involved a driver with a BAC of .15 or higher, representing about 11.5% of all pedestrian deaths.
Speeding was recorded in 15 crashes, or 11.5%, while distracted driving was identified in six crashes, or 4.6%.
These figures should be read carefully. They describe factors recorded in this particular five-year dataset; they do not establish that one behavior caused more deaths than another. Speeding and distracted driving remain important factors even when they appear less frequently in the available records. But another circumstance stands out even more sharply.
More Than One in Four Fatalities Involved a Hit-and-Run
Of Charlotte’s 131 pedestrian deaths during the five-year period, 37 involved a hit-and-run driver. That is roughly 28% of all pedestrian deaths, more than one in every four.
The percentage varied considerably by year. Hit-and-run crashes accounted for 25% of pedestrian deaths in 2020 and climbed to 46.2% in 2021. The share fell to 13% in 2023 before rising again to 32.4% in 2024. Across the entire five-year period, however, the rate remained higher than the share involving a driver with a BAC of .08 or higher, speeding or distracted driving.
That makes fleeing the scene one of the most frequently recurring circumstances in Charlotte’s pedestrian fatalities. And it adds another human dimension to the numbers. In these crashes, the fatal collision is not necessarily the end of the story. Families may be left without immediate answers about what happened or who was responsible.
The Vehicles Involved are Changing, Too
The vehicles involved in fatal pedestrian crashes also reveal a shift worth watching. Passenger cars were the largest category from 2020 through 2024, serving as the striking vehicle in 57 pedestrian deaths, or 43.5% of the total.
Light trucks, including pickups, SUVs and vans, accounted for another 49 deaths, or 37.4%. SUVs alone were involved in 31 deaths, representing 23.7% of all pedestrian fatalities. Pickup trucks were involved in 14 deaths and vans in four. Large trucks accounted for five deaths, buses for two, while 18 deaths were categorized as other or unknown vehicle types.
The yearly numbers and data suggest another narrative about the types of vehicles involved in pedestrian deaths. In 2020, SUVs were the striking vehicle in 12.5% of Charlotte’s pedestrian deaths. By 2024, that share had reached 29.4%.
At the same time, the yearly totals are relatively small, and when looking at the longer-term picture, the data still places passenger cars first for pedestrian lives lost, with SUVs consistently the second-largest vehicle category. The trend is therefore worth watching without overstating what five years of data can establish.
The Real People Behind the Numbers
Statistics can make a pedestrian fatality feel abstract. Age and gender data bring the focus back to the people represented by those numbers.
Of the 131 pedestrians who died in Charlotte between 2020 and 2024, 90 were men. That is 68.7% of all pedestrian deaths.
Women accounted for 41 deaths, or 31.3%. Across the five-year period, men were involved in approximately 2.2 times as many pedestrian deaths as women. The pattern remained relatively consistent in most of the five years that were looked at: men represented 75% of deaths in 2020, 70.8% in 2022, 69.6% in 2023, and 76.5% in 2024. The notable exception was 2021, when the split was exactly 50/50.
Adults between 25 and 54 accounted for 71 deaths, or 54.2% of the total. Another 41 deaths involved people age 55 and older, representing 31.3%. Together, people age 25 and older accounted for 112 of the 131 pedestrian deaths, 85.5% of the total.
Younger pedestrians represented a much smaller share. People ages 16 to 24 accounted for 15 deaths, or 11.5%, while children age 15 and younger accounted for just three deaths over the five-year period, or 2.3%.
There is also a change among older adults that stands out. People age 55 and older represented 25% of pedestrian deaths in 2020. By 2024, that share had risen to 38.2%.
The age and gender data come from separate portions of the dataset, so they cannot establish whether a particular combination of age and gender is more likely to be involved. But each measure independently reveals a persistent pattern in who is being lost.
What the Patterns Say About Charlotte’s Roads
Taken individually, each statistic tells only part of the story of the lives that are being lost each year on Charlotte’s roads. And so, it’s important to consider the different factors to understand what is going on and what can be worked on.
There is a lot of data here; the population-adjusted rate shows Charlotte’s pedestrian fatality burden is higher than the national and state rates. The road-level analysis shows that deaths are concentrated rather than evenly distributed. The seasonal data shows that risk rises during the fall and early winter.
The behavioral data adds another layer that needs to be examined to understand what is going on in Charlotte. Alcohol involvement appears frequently, while hit-and-run crashes account for more than one in four deaths. The vehicle data shows passenger cars remain the largest category, while SUV involvement has increased over the five-year period.
And the demographic data shows that the people dying are overwhelmingly adults, with men accounting for nearly seven in 10 fatalities. Put those findings together, and the central issue becomes harder to describe as random, and it also provides a more holistic approach to viewing the issue the city has with pedestrian deaths.
Charlotte’s pedestrian deaths follow patterns. They appear repeatedly on particular corridors. They rise during particular months. They recur alongside particular circumstances. And in some places, the same types of roads continue to appear in the fatality record year after year.
That concentration matters because it changes how the problem can be understood. Instead of viewing 131 deaths as 131 isolated tragedies, the data reveals clusters, places and patterns that repeatedly put pedestrians at risk, and by zooming into these patterns, things may be made safer to prevent the deaths of real people.
The Biggest Takeaway: Pedestrian Risk is Not Random
From 2020 through 2024, 131 people died while walking in Charlotte. Nearly half of those deaths occurred on just 10 roads in the city. More than one in four fatalities involved a hit-and-run driver. Alcohol involvement was recorded more frequently than speeding or distracted driving. Passenger cars were involved in the largest share of deaths, while SUV involvement increased over the period. And the people most often killed were adults, particularly those age 25 and older, with men accounting for nearly seven in 10 deaths.
The numbers tell us more than how many people Charlotte has lost. They show where the danger is concentrated, when it becomes more pronounced, what circumstances repeatedly appear, and who is most often affected. With this information, real change may be able to emerge with the right steps.
Charlotte launched Vision Zero in 2018 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2040. The latest five years of pedestrian fatality data show how much remains between that goal and the city roads and streets that real people use every day. The most important finding may therefore be the simplest: pedestrian risk is not random, and that matters because it means that something can be done. The deaths are concentrated. The patterns repeat. And the data gives Charlotte a clearer picture of where people are most likely to lose their lives simply trying to get from one place to another.
Shane Smith Law consists of a team of attorneys who are responsive, caring, and highly qualified. The firm has helped more than 10,000 clients navigate the legal complexities that can follow serious accidents. If you have questions after a pedestrian accident in Charlotte or are unsure about your next steps, Shane Smith Law is available to help. Learn more by speaking with a Charlotte pedestrian accident lawyer for a free consultation.
