Yuma's new road safety plan counts 104 fatal crashes. Fixing the roads is a separate decision.

The City's new Road Safety Action Plan staff report counts 17,387 crashes on Yuma-area roads between 2015 and 2024. It classifies 104 of them as fatal crashes.

Those numbers come from the City's new Road Safety Action Plan, which Council is expected to adopt Wednesday as R2026-047. It's on the consent agenda, which means it'll likely pass in one vote with a stack of other routine items unless someone asks to pull it.

That's a pretty quiet way to handle a document that counts that many deaths. The more interesting conversation is about what the plan does and doesn't do.

Read the fine print on the numbers

The staff report says the decade of data included 431 crashes with suspected serious injuries alongside the 104 fatal ones, and that the fatal crash rate rose 112 percent over the period.

A couple of cautions, because crash numbers get misused a lot.

A fatal crash isn't the same as a death. Some crashes kill more than one person, so 104 fatal crashes means at least 104 people lost their lives. The report doesn't give the actual count of people killed or seriously hurt.

The 112 percent is a change in a rate, not a doubling of deaths. Rates are usually calculated per mile driven or per resident, and the packet doesn't say which one was used, or which years are being compared. I can tell you the City reports it. I can't tell you whether it holds up, because the full August 2026 report, with the year-by-year tables, isn't in the agenda packet. The resolution says it's on file with the City Clerk.

And the boundary matters. The study covers City streets plus County and ADOT roads within a defined Yuma area. So these aren't countywide figures, and they aren't limited to roads the City maintains.

Ten places, eight projects

The plan names the spots it wants to fix first. There are six intersections:

• 32nd Street and Pacific Avenue
• 32nd Street and Avenue 3E
• 32nd Street and 8th Avenue
• Avenue B and 8th Street
• Avenue B and 16th Street
• Avenue B and 20th Street

And four corridors:

• 4th Avenue, from 1st Street to Catalina Drive
• 24th Street, from 18th Avenue to 4th Avenue
• 5th Avenue, from 6th Street to 13th Street
• Magnolia Avenue, from 1st Street to 3rd Street

If 32nd Street and Avenue B are part of your daily drive, you'll notice they show up three times each.

That's ten locations. The staff report calls them "eight high-priority projects." Some of them may be bundled together, or it may just be a drafting slip. It's worth sorting out, because the project breakdown is also where you'd find how the plan's $31.33 million planning-level cost estimate gets divided up.

One more thing the list isn't: an official ranking of the most dangerous places in Yuma. The report doesn't present it that way.

Beyond specific locations, the plan points at broader patterns: intersection crashes, cars leaving their lanes, motorcyclists, nighttime driving, pedestrians and bicyclists, impaired driving, speeding, and people not wearing seat belts. It recommends things like better lighting, signal upgrades, speed management and more protection for people on foot and on bikes.

Why adopt a plan that doesn't build anything?

The resolution is blunt about its limits. Adopting the plan doesn't appropriate money, doesn't authorize construction contracts, and doesn't commit the City to any individual project. The fiscal form shows zero dollars.

What it does is put Yuma in line for the money. The plan itself was paid for with a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant and state AZ SMART funding. That covered planning. According to staff, the next steps after adoption include pursuing Safe Streets and Roads for All implementation grants and other funding, moving priority projects into the Capital Improvement Program, checking results every year, and updating the plan about every five years.

Each project would still need study, design, funding and its own Council approval. The packet supplies no construction schedule for them.

The plan's goal is to cut fatal and serious-injury crashes by two-thirds by 2040, and eventually to zero.

That's a big promise to make in a resolution that spends nothing. To be fair, the resolution is honest that it spends nothing, and a plan has to come before the projects. But a goal like that will be measured in budgets, not resolutions. The moment to watch isn't Wednesday's consent vote. It's the next time the City decides how to spend its capital money, and whether 32nd Street and Avenue B make the cut.

Sources

• City of Yuma, R2026-047 legislation record and staff report: crash totals, 112 percent rate change, study area, project list, $31,330,000, goals, funding sources, next steps
• City of Yuma, Resolution R2026-047: no appropriation or project commitment; full report on file with City Clerk
• City of Yuma, October 21, 2026 City Council agenda: Resolution Consent Agenda item 1