By Tyler Faurot / Point Loma–OB Monthly SDU-T / February 13, 202
Though the city of San Diego identified a segment of road in the Midway District as a “high-crash” location, the city has determined that no new traffic-control measures are warranted there.
The stretch of Midway Drive between Duke and Kemper streets had three injury collisions in 2024, placing it among 14 city roadways considered worthy of prioritizing for further traffic engineering evaluation and potential safety improvements.
Since 2015, when the city adopted “Vision Zero,” an initiative with the goal of eliminating traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries, city traffic engineers have examined sites where injury crashes are most prevalent to help determine improvements to prevent future incidents.
A memorandum in March 2025 from Senior Traffic Engineer Philip Rust listed several high-crash locations from 2024, all categorized by type of injury and portion of roadway. The memo instructed engineers with the city Transportation Department to examine those sites and come up with recommendations for infrastructure enhancements.
The memo listed the quarter-mile Midway Drive stretch between Duke and Kemper in a category of five segments with the most injury crashes. Each road segment in that category was associated with three injury crashes in 2024.
A city statement last month said transportation crews “have completed, or are in the process of completing,” recommended safety improvements at several locations on the list of 14. It said some must be completed through the city’s Capital Improvement Program and will require additional funding.
Midway Drive is not among the roadways getting enhancements.
Transportation Department spokesman Anthony Santacroce suggested the number of crashes, while outpacing other road segments, is not an egregious amount.
“With only three, I would say that’s pretty good,” Santacroce said. “What we found was the severity of the injuries was low, which means it could have been a fender-bender.”
Data provided by the San Diego Police Department lists a few injury collisions along the Midway segment in the same period, none of them fatal. The time of the incidents ranged from early afternoon to late in the evening. They involved various vehicle types and, in a few cases, bicycles.
In January 2024, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a truck at the intersection of Midway Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard, which is beyond Duke Street and thus outside the segment the city examined.
Traffic engineers determined no changes to traffic control were warranted on the Midway Drive stretch because the three injury crashes in 2024 did not demonstrate a distinguishable pattern.
“The segment made the list because, according to the data, it was among the highest for crashes,” Santacroce said. “But based on what we saw, there was nothing we could improve that would have prevented those crashes. …
“If we saw crashes at a segment or intersection that kept having to do with a left turn or something, we would see that crash pattern and that would inform us that we need to do something about the infrastructure around there.”
“When we do the 2025 crash data,” Santacroce added, “it could be that the Midway segment doesn’t make that list again.”
The traffic data for last year is expected to become available late this summer, he said.
