Just after 7 p.m. on an October day nearly three years ago, Letysha Carter pulled onto North Tryon Street in Charlotte not far from the intersection with Eastway Drive.
Within seconds, a driver sideswiped her black Kia Forte, sending Carter spinning and careening off the road and into a tree.
Her right knee smashed into the dashboard and shattered.
The crash happened on a stretch of road where serious traffic accidents occur often, according to a Charlotte Observer analysis of city Department of Transportation data.
Since 2018, more than 257,000 car wrecks have occurred on Charlotte’s streets, with the number of crashes increasing since more commuters returned to the office following the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 500 people were killed and another 600-plus suffered disabling injuries, such as a massive blood loss or broken bones.
Plot Charlotte’s fatal and serious car crashes on a map and the city’s hot spots become clear. They line some of Charlotte’s busiest thoroughfares, particularly those in the city’s crescent — the ring of lower-income neighborhoods north, east and west of uptown.
Driver inattention caused the most crashes, according to the Observer’s analysis. Many drivers causing crashes were distracted by using their phones.
But speeding caused the most fatal wrecks and those that caused serious injuries, data show.
To help prevent serious crashes, lowering the speed limit on some city roads is a focus of the city’s Vision Zero program , which began in 2019. It seeks to eliminate traffic-related deaths and severe injuries on the city’s roads by 2030, said Geoff Sloop, traffic safety manager for the city.
“Speed kills. It just produces forces that we’re just not able to withstand,” said David Smith, Charlotte DOT’s engineering and operations division manager.
Spots where wrecks are more common
Multiple factors including speed, traffic volume and the presence of pedestrians can increase the frequency and severity of wrecks, city officials say.
Charlotte’s worst traffic wrecks happen more often on sections of four- to six-lane roads that often funnel drivers into uptown or through commercial corridors and have speed limits of 35 to 45 miles per hour.
▪ Eastway Drive between Central Avenue and Dunlavin Way in the Windsor Park neighborhood runs about a half mile. That stretch of road had five fatal wrecks and five others that resulted in a serious injury.
▪ Central Avenue between Eastway Drive and North Sharon Amity Road, also in east Charlotte, runs about 1.4 miles. That area had six fatalities and seven serious-injury wrecks.
▪ Brookshire Boulevard near Interstate 85 northwest of uptown had four fatal crashes and six wrecks that resulted in a serious injury.
▪ Wilkinson Boulevard and the intersection of Old Steele Creek Road in Ashley Park had three fatal crashes, data show.
Pedestrians at risk too
Vehicles struck and killed about 170 pedestrians in Charlotte between 2018 and 2023, according to state Department of Transportation data. Eleven bicyclists were also killed.
The location of these collisions mirror where fatal and serious-injury crashes are most common, with the crescent and uptown seeing the majority of them.
“Uptown probably lights up like that due to pedestrian interactions,” Smith said. “In general, speeds are pretty low, but there’s also a great deal of pedestrian activity.”
The city is trying to reduce these collisions by lowering speed limits and adding devices that make roads safer for pedestrians , such as flashing beacons that stop traffic when pedestrians cross, he said.
Speed versus inattention
Between 2018 and mid-2023, there were eight serious crashes on North Tryon Street between Dorton Street and Eastway Drive near where Carter was hit, data show.
Six of those crashes killed someone, making the roughly half-mile stretch one of the deadliest in the city.
Carter, now 32, was hit by a distracted driver, according to DOT records.
Following the crash, she spent about four days in the hospital recovering from knee replacement, she told the Observer. She spent months in physical therapy and was out of work from her job stocking shelves at Target for half a year before she left the company.
To this day, she refuses to drive the portion of North Tryon Street where she was hit by a driver reaching for her phone.
“I get nervous on that street so I go around it,” she said
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