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Story by Mercia Hobson Tuesday, August 4, 2026 Fairfax County has matched its full-year totals for pedestrian and vulnerable road user deaths from both 2024 and 2025 in under seven months. As the death toll for non-drivers climbed to 14 as of July 29, safety advocates warned that simple, life-saving street fixes remain stalled behind red tape and state approval hurdles. Back-to-back fatal collisions in July along Richmond Highway (Route 1) in Hybla Valley have renewed calls for systemic roadway safety improvements across Northern Virginia. “My colleagues at Safe Streets are deeply disappointed and saddened by the alarming number of avoidable pedestrian fatalities in Fairfax County…

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by Lianna Golden FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — New concerns are being raised about safety along Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, where advocates say the busy corridor is becoming increasingly deadly and needs immediate action from local and state leaders. “We call these crashes. We don’t call them accidents because accidents infer it was unavoidable,” Mike Doyle, Executive Director of Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets, said. “Now, every one of these could have been avoided.” RELATED | FCPS declines to release full external investigation report on high school groping case Doyle, who founded the pedestrian safety group, is referring to the number of crashes from…

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By Angela WoolseyPublished May 28, 2026 at 3:05PM More than 60 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed or seriously injured in crashes on Richmond Highway over the past decade — and conditions appear to be worsening instead of improving, a new analysis says. Skimpy lighting and crossings, along with alcohol intoxication, appear to be driving factors behind the frequent serious crashes that occur in the approximately 14-mile corridor from the Alexandria border down to the Occoquan River south of Lorton, according to Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets (NoVA FSS). “The Richmond Highway corridor is a concentrated and consistent pedestrian safety crisis,” the volunteer-led advocacy group said. “These crashes…

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By Rossy Soto, Jasmin Dinh and Jeff Plungis In 2022, Justice High School junior Lesly Diaz-Bonilla was struck and killed as she was leaving the Barcroft View Apartments, on her way to school. Just four years earlier, in the same Fairfax County location, a mother and daughter were injured by a hit-and-run driver. Diaz-Bonilla’s death drew attention to a safety problem that continues to plague a 4-mile stretch of Columbia Pike between Bailey’s Crossroads and Annandale, where poor design and inattentive drivers often put pedestrians at risk. There are proven, low-cost countermeasures that could improve safety, but they haven’t been implemented, despite growing pressure from neighbors who live around…

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By Eliza Tebo March 3, 2026 Connecting a three-block stretch of a leafy Arlington neighborhood near a couple of parks lies an unassuming sidewalk. Other than the young trees alongside it and the caution-yellow curb ramps, there’s nothing remarkable about this patch of pavement—except for the fact it was eight years in the making. Pete Erickson’s vision for it began in 2012 when he moved to Tara-Leeway Heights with his wife, Sabrina, and their two young kids. Though they liked their new home, they were concerned about the lack of sidewalks along their street. In the years that followed, the county opened the new Cardinal…

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By Katie Taranto Published January 8, 2026 at 10:30AM A new report on traffic safety in Northern Virginia is raising concerns about the number of “near miss” incidents in Alexandria, especially those involving children. A total of 155 near miss incidents involving children were reported in Alexandria from January 2024 to December 2025 — more than in any other Northern Virginia locality, according to the report from Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets (NoVA FSS). Of those incidents, 53 of them occurred at a single intersection in Potomac West. The two-year report aims to “[bring] awareness to the long-standing risks of street safety to children as reported by their parents”…

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by Izam Izzadeen Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments The How Safe Are Our Roads? Report, prepared for the Washington Regional Alcohol Program (WRAP) by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), reveals that alcohol and drug-impaired traffic fatalities in the region decreased 26 percent between 2023 and 2024 While these fatalities fell from 100 to 74—representing 23.2 percent of the 319 total regional traffic deaths—the report notes that impaired driving-related injuries and crashes both saw increases. Specifically, injuries rose nearly four percent to 1,649, while crashes increased two percent to 3,731. Regional arrests for driving under the influence (DUI) or driving while impaired (DWI) remained…