Asheville crash data flags Patton, Merrimon among city’s deadliest roads

Patton Avenue, Merrimon Avenue, Tunnel Road and Hendersonville Road are where Asheville’s daily driving risk keeps piling up. New crash data shows the city’s busiest corridors are also among its most dangerous, with congestion, turning traffic and a mix of local and through drivers creating the kind of conditions where one bad move can quickly become a wreck.

Patton Avenue stands out most sharply. The corridor carries U.S. 19, U.S. 23 and U.S. 74A through one of Asheville’s heaviest traffic zones, where strip-mall driveways, side streets and fast-moving traffic all compete for the same space. The intersection of Patton Avenue and New Leicester Highway recorded more than 140 crashes from 2020 through 2024. Most were property-damage collisions, but some left drivers and passengers with injuries ranging from minor to serious.

Merrimon Avenue tells a different story, but the risk is just as real. Faster traffic there mixes with left turns, pedestrians and cyclists, making it one of the city’s most contested streets. N.C. Department of Transportation data after Asheville’s Merrimon conversion showed a 23% drop in total crashes and a 30% drop in injury crashes. Average speeds fell 3 to 5 mph, while rush-hour travel times rose only two to 14 seconds. NCDOT defines a road diet as converting a four-lane undivided roadway to a three-lane segment with two through lanes and a center two-way left-turn lane, a design meant to improve safety and mobility.

Tunnel Road and Hendersonville Road also rank high because dense commercial development means more stopping, turning and distraction. That pattern matters for drivers deciding whether to take the shortest route, for cyclists choosing a lane position and for pedestrians crossing in front of constant curb cuts and parking lot exits.

The local picture fits a wider danger across North Carolina. A 2026 analysis of federal crash data ranked the state 18th nationally for the likelihood of dying in a car crash, with a lifetime risk of about 1 in 89, or 1.12%. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says motor-vehicle crashes killed 40,901 people in the U.S. in 2023, and it updates those fatality facts each year using federal FARS data.

NCDOT says its crash maps and county crash profiles are updated annually to help identify patterns and guide safety fixes. In Asheville, those maps sit inside a bigger debate over what the city and state have chosen to build, delay or reject. The long-planned I-26 Connector would remove interstate traffic from the Capt. Jeff Bowen bridges and create new multimodal links, while in February 2025 NCDOT said removing the proposed I-240-to-Patton Avenue connection would reduce impacts and improve public safety. Downtown bike-lane plans for College Street and Patton Avenue also drew divided council votes and public controversy, and Merrimon’s lane reduction faced similar resistance before crash data later pointed to safety gains.