Crash Atlas · US-1 corridor study
Richmond Highway
Every fatal crash on US-1 through Fairfax County and Alexandria, 2018–2024. Two thirds of the people it killed were walking.
What the file says
- Richmond Highway killed 29 people in seven years, 2 in Alexandria city and 27 in Fairfax County. Only I-495 took more lives in Northern Virginia over the same period (40) — and I-495 is a limited-access interstate that nobody is expected to cross on foot.
- 19 of the 29 dead were pedestrians — 65.5%. Across all roads in the five Northern Virginia jurisdictions the pedestrian share is 36%. On I-495 it is 25%. Richmond Highway is not a deadly road in the ordinary way; it is deadly to people on foot specifically.
- 18 of the 19 pedestrians died after dark — 94.7%. One died in daylight.
- 13 of 19 were killed away from an intersection, and in 12 cases the crash report noted no crosswalk at the location at all. That is a measurement of how far apart the safe crossings are.
- 23 of the 29 fatal crashes were on a stretch posted at 45 mph or higher. A pedestrian struck at 45 mph is very unlikely to survive; the same person struck at 25 mph usually does.
- 10 of the 19 pedestrians killed were 55 or older.
- Every pedestrian killed here was tested for alcohol; 12% of the drivers were. That gap is the reason any comparison of pedestrian drinking against driver drinking on this corridor is unsound — the numbers and why they mislead.
pedestrians killed on Richmond Highway died in the dark, most of them away from any crossing, on a road posted at 45 mph or more. Those three facts describe the same design decision.
Where on the corridor
All 29 fatal crashes on US-1. Dashed rings mark the 4 locations where more than one happened within 150 m. Click a point for the date, hour, posted speed limit and light condition.
… / … fatal crashes
Circle size is the number of people killed in that crash. A dashed ring marks a location where two or more separate fatal crashes happened within 150 m of each other.
The repeat locations
Places on US-1 where two or more separate fatal crashes happened within 150 m of each other. Coordinates link to OpenStreetMap so you can see the crossing spacing for yourself.
| Location | Jurisdiction | Fatal crashes | Killed | Pedestrians | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38.70868, -77.15939 | Fairfax County | 5 | 5 | 4 | 2020, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 |
| 38.78882, -77.06527 | Fairfax County | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2020, 2020, 2022, 2024 |
| 38.72897, -77.10827 | Fairfax County | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2023, 2024 |
| 38.6848, -77.22334 | Fairfax County | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2020, 2024 |
Year by year
The dark band is pedestrians. There is no downward trend in this corridor over the seven years; 2024, still preliminary, is the worst year in the file.
Posted speed limit where the crash happened
The highest posted limit recorded on any vehicle in the crash. 23 of 29 fatal crashes were on a stretch signed 45 mph or above.
| Posted limit | Fatal crashes |
|---|---|
| 25 mph | 1 |
| 35 mph | 5 |
| 45 mph | 14 |
| 50 mph | 7 |
| 55 mph | 2 |
Light condition, pedestrian deaths
| Dark, lighted | 10 | 53% |
| Dark, not lighted | 8 | 42% |
| Daylight | 1 | 5% |
Where on the road
| Not At Intersection | 13 | 68% |
| At Intersection | 4 | 21% |
| Intersection-Related | 2 | 11% |
Alcohol, and who gets tested for it
Alcohol is part of the public argument about this corridor, so it is worth setting out what a federal crash census can and cannot establish about it. The answer turns out to be less about drinking than about testing.
Alcohol recorded, 29 fatal crashes
| A driver recorded as drinking | 4 | 14% |
| A pedestrian killed at 0.08 or above | 6 | 21% |
| Either | 9 | 31% |
Who was actually given a blood-alcohol test
| Pedestrians killed | 19 of 19 | 100% |
| Drivers involved | 5 of 42 | 12% |
Do not read the first table without the second
Every pedestrian killed on this corridor was tested for alcohol. 12% of the drivers were. A person who dies is autopsied; a driver who walks away from the scene usually is not, and FARS records only what was measured.
So the two rows in the first table are not comparable, and the gap between them is not evidence that drivers were sober. It is evidence that we know the pedestrians’ blood alcohol and mostly do not know the drivers’. Any corridor figure that sets pedestrian drinking against driver drinking inherits this asymmetry, whatever the underlying source — and the comparison, stated without the testing rates, reliably turns a road-design argument into an argument about the people who died on the road.
The design question does not depend on it either way. A corridor where 13 of 19 people were killed away from any crossing, 18 of them in the dark, at posted speeds of 45 mph and above, is a corridor with no margin for anyone’s error — which is the entire premise of Vision Zero.
All 29 fatal crashes
The full corridor file, one row per crash. This is the table to paste into a board packet; the same rows are in the CSV download with coordinates attached.
| Date | Hour | Jurisdiction | Road | Killed | Ped | Speed | Light |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-04-04 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 50 | Dawn | |
| 2018-05-05 | 07:00 | Alexandria | US-1 & WILKES STREET | 1 | 25 | Daylight | |
| 2018-11-30 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & HAGEL CIRCLE | 1 | 1 | 50 | Dark, lighted |
| 2019-02-07 | 21:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2019-03-26 | 07:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & FAIRHAVEN AVE | 1 | 1 | 35 | Daylight |
| 2020-01-09 | 20:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2020-01-16 | 21:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 50 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2020-02-11 | 01:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 50 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2020-09-09 | 22:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2020-11-27 | 13:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & BACKLICK RD | 1 | 45 | Daylight | |
| 2020-12-09 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 45 | Daylight | |
| 2021-08-11 | 21:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 55 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2021-12-09 | 20:00 | Hybla Valley | US-1 RICHMOND HWY | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2022-07-06 | 22:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2022-07-08 | 01:00 | Lorton | US-1/RAMP | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2022-07-16 | 05:00 | Lorton | US-1 | 1 | 50 | Dark, lighted | |
| 2022-10-06 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & RICHMOND HWY | 1 | 1 | 50 | Dark, lighted |
| 2022-12-21 | 18:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2023-03-30 | 21:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & GROVETON ST | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2023-04-07 | 05:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2023-05-06 | 17:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & BIRCH CREST WAY | 1 | 45 | Daylight | |
| 2023-10-06 | 22:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 | 1 | 1 | 35 | Dark, lighted |
| 2024-02-14 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & GILES RUN RD | 1 | 50 | Dawn | |
| 2024-02-15 | 04:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & RICHMOND HWY | 1 | 1 | 35 | Dark, not lighted |
| 2024-02-18 | 22:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & RICHMOND HIGHWAY | 1 | 1 | 35 | Dark, lighted |
| 2024-07-03 | 16:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 & RICHMOND HWY | 1 | 35 | Daylight | |
| 2024-08-02 | 23:00 | Alexandria | US-1 RAMP | 1 | 55 | Dark, lighted | |
| 2024-09-26 | 06:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 RICHMOND HWY | 1 | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
| 2024-11-25 | 23:00 | Fairfax County | US-1 RICHMOND HWY & FORT HUNT RD | 1 | 45 | Dark, lighted |
Speed is the highest posted limit recorded on a vehicle in the crash, in mph. Hour is local time. 2024 rows are preliminary.
What this study is not
FARS is fatal-only. It contains none of the serious injuries on this corridor, and a road can be redesigned on injury evidence long before anyone dies on it — Virginia DMV crash records are the source for that. Nor does this page carry exposure: we do not know how many people walk this corridor, so 19 deaths cannot be turned into a risk per crossing. What it does establish is where the deaths are, who they happen to, and under what conditions, from a federal census of fatal crashes that nobody has to take our word for.
Methodology
- Corridor definition. A crash is on this corridor when
either the FARS roadway field (
TWAY_ID) or the cross-street field (TWAY_ID2) carries the route designationUS-1. That catches the records filed as plainUS-1, asUS-1 RICHMOND HWY, and asUS-1/RAMP. It will not catch a crash on the corridor that was filed only under a local street name with no route number, so this is a floor, not a ceiling. - Extent. Fairfax County and Alexandria city only, the two jurisdictions in this study that US-1 passes through. The corridor continues north into Arlington and south into Prince William County; neither is in this file.
- Source. NHTSA FARS National CSV downloads 2018–2024,
accessed 2026-08-30. Pedestrian deaths from the person file
on
INJ_SEV = 4; crossing location and crosswalk presence from the FARS pedestrian file joined on(ST_CASE, VEH_NO, PER_NO)and limited to the people who died. Posted speed limit isVSPD_LIMfrom the vehicle file, taking the highest valid value on the crash. - Alcohol. A driver counts as drinking on
DR_DRINK = 1in the vehicle file. Pedestrian blood alcohol isALC_RESin the person file, which is BAC × 100; values of 900 and above are the "not tested / unknown" sentinels and are counted as untested rather than as zero. The testing rates are the count of people with any valid result over the count of people present. - Full methodology for the wider study is on the Northern Virginia page.
Cite this study
Republish freely under CC BY 4.0. Use it in testimony, a board packet, or a story without asking us.
AccidentLawyerReview, "Richmond Highway: Every Fatal Crash on US-1, 2018-2024," 2026-08-30. https://accidentlawyerreview.com/research/crash-atlas/virginia/richmond-highway/
Need the corridor split differently — by segment, by council district, by year for a specific stretch? Email research@accidentlawyerreview.com. Free, no conditions.
Download
- richmond_highway.json — the whole corridor study: totals, year series, jurisdiction split, pedestrian context, repeat locations, and all 29 crashes.
- points.csv —
every fatal crash in the five jurisdictions; filter the
routecolumn forUS-1.
Licensed CC BY 4.0. FARS itself is US federal public-domain data.
The rest of the study
- All of Northern Virginia 428 killed · 154 on foot
- Fairfax County the corridor's larger half
- Alexandria where US-1 becomes city street
- Arlington County north of the corridor
AccidentLawyerReview is an independent public-data directory of US personal-injury law firms. We are not a law firm and do not give legal advice. This study aggregates public crash records for journalists, advocates, and residents; it does not interpret any specific legal claim.