Southern Utah is where CollisionCam started, and it is where we have watched the longest. St. George and Washington County have a specific problem: the road network was built for a much smaller town, and the population has not stopped growing.
What makes the region distinctive
Most crash-heavy areas are dense grids with steady traffic. Southern Utah is different in ways that show up clearly in footage:
- Fast growth on older infrastructure — intersections designed for a fraction of today's volume, widened rather than redesigned
- Big speed differentials — 50 mph highway-style arterials feeding straight into commercial streets
- Seasonal and tourist traffic — a large share of drivers unfamiliar with the roads, hesitating or committing late
- Sun glare — the east-west corridors are punishing at sunrise and sunset, and the region gets a lot of both
- Long blocks with commercial driveways — constant turning movements between signals
A visiting driver who is unsure and a local who knows the road at 50 mph are a bad combination at the same intersection.
The pattern we see
The recurring corners are where the main arterials cross — the St. George Boulevard, Bluff Street, Sunset Boulevard, Red Cliffs Drive and Telegraph Street corridors carry the bulk of the region's traffic, and their intersections with each other carry the bulk of its collisions. The I-15 interchange approaches add merging and unfamiliar drivers to the same corners.
The dominant crash types are consistent: unprotected left turns across a fast arterial, and rear-end collisions where a driver approaching at 50 does not expect the queue that has formed at the signal.
We are not going to invent a ranking. We are compiling a verified list from state crash records combined with our own detections, rather than repeating numbers we cannot stand behind. It will link from this page when it is ready.
Driving Washington County more safely
- Assume the driver ahead is lost. Late braking and sudden turns are common where a large share of traffic is visiting.
- Respect the speed drop. Where a 50 mph arterial becomes a commercial street, the queue appears sooner than instinct expects.
- Sunglasses in the car year-round. Glare is a genuine, recurring cause here, not an excuse.
- Wait for the arrow. Judging a gap against a 50 mph approach is a bet you do not need to take.
- Check left on green before entering any of the major crossings.
If you were in one
Southern Utah is our densest coverage relative to population — it is where the company began and where the network is oldest. If your crash happened at one of these intersections, the odds we have it are good.