photo by: City of Lawrence

A map shows fatality and injury crashes in Lawrence in 2025. Injury crashes are marked with orange dots and fatal crashes with red dots.

The number of injury crashes in Lawrence held steady last year, according to a newly released report, and the city hopes more road safety projects in the coming year will help drive injuries and fatal crashes down.

Earlier this month, the city shared its data on traffic crashes for 2025 for the local Vision Zero transportation plan. The plan has a goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries from transportation accidents by 2050.

Bailey Waters, a project engineer with the city, told the Connected City Advisory Board that 2025’s numbers were pretty similar to 2024’s. “People are trending pretty steadily right now,” she said, in Lawrence and in other Kansas cities.

“In general, Lawrence has pretty safe streets,” Waters told the board. “… Number of fatal crashes per 100,000 residents, we have a really quite low number.”

The data shows that Lawrence had four fatality crashes and 317 injury crashes within the city limits in 2025, compared to 322 in 2024. Of the fatality crashes in 2025, three of them involved motorcycles, and two of those occurred at a single roundabout on Clinton Parkway.

• July 9, 2025: A motorcyclist dies in a crash at the roundabout at Clinton Parkway and Lake Point Drive. Police said speed was a factor in the crash.

• Aug. 8, 2025: A motorcyclist dies in a collision with a car at the intersection of 21st Street and Naismith Drive.

• Aug. 28, 2025: A motorcyclist dies after striking the roundabout at Clinton Parkway and Lake Point Drive.

• Nov. 24, 2025: A driver dies on 23rd Street after crossing into the opposing lanes and hitting another vehicle. Police said the driver was experiencing a medical emergency before the crash; the people in the other vehicle suffered minor injuries.

Two other fatal crashes occurred in the Lawrence area in 2025 and resulted in drivers being criminally charged, but these aren’t reflected in the data for the city because both took place just outside the city limits. These are the crashes that killed 41-year-old actor Louise ImMasche and 20-year-old University of Kansas student Elsa McGrain:

• ImMasche’s car was hit head-on on Oct. 24 on the South Lawrence Trafficway just south of the city limits. The other driver, Eliseo J. Munoz Jr., was charged months later with reckless second-degree murder, circumvention of an interlock device, reckless driving and driving while suspended.

• McGrain was jogging near North Lawrence, just north of the city limits, on Nov. 7, 2025, when she was struck by a vehicle that fled the scene. Law enforcement later arrested William Klingler in the case, and he was charged with leaving the scene of a fatality accident, circumventing an ignition interlock device and several other crimes.

A look at Douglas County’s dashboard for Vision Zero shows that there were six traffic deaths in the county in 2024; none of those occurred inside the city limits, but some were close, such as one on the SLT and one just north of Lawrence on U.S. 24. In 2023, there were seven traffic deaths in Douglas County, including five inside the city limits.

The report also uses police data to break down vehicle crashes by what the vehicle struck and where on the vehicle the crash occurred. It shows that 71% of injury or fatality crashes involved a collision between two vehicles on the road; 15% involved a collision with a bicyclist or pedestrian; and 11% involved a collision with a parked vehicle or a fixed object.

More than 100 injury crashes were angled or side-impact collisions, which Waters said often occur at intersections. For example, she said, “maybe a vehicle ran a red light and someone else hit them.” Seventy-nine of the injury crashes were rear-end crashes, and 28 were head-on collisions.

To lower the number of crashes, Waters said the city has several projects in the works or about to begin.

Some are bigger projects, like the ongoing Jayhawk Watershed project on Ninth and the upcoming reconstruction of southern Massachusetts Street, both of which will reduce the number of lanes and add protections for cyclists. Others are smaller in scope; Waters mentioned that traffic lights would be retimed on Iowa Street and 23rd Street, and that the city had implemented “curb bump-outs” in multiple road projects, such as at 12th and Connecticut and Eighth and Tennessee streets.

Waters also said the city would be doing some projects with a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. As the Journal-World reported, the city sought $320,000 in grants for road safety audits or corridor studies along sections of 23rd Street and Sixth Street; Waters said that these audits could begin next year, as could a pilot project for “leading pedestrian intervals,” which let pedestrians start crossing at certain intersections before cars are given the green light.

“It hopefully will start early next year; that would be the goal,” Waters said.

Reports have also been released for Eudora and Baldwin City. Neither had any fatal crashes in 2025; Eudora had 11 injury crashes, and Baldwin City had 10. According to the dashboard, they didn’t have any deaths in the previous two years, either; Eudora had seven injury crashes in 2024 and 13 in 2023; Baldwin City had 15 in 2024 and 10 in 2023.

The dashboard hasn’t been updated with the 2025 data yet, but a link to it is available at lawrenceks.gov/mpo/vision-zero.