{"id":615520,"date":"2026-09-25T05:48:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T05:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/615520\/walner-law-a-chicago-personal-injury-firm-finds-i255-crashes-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-fatal-as-the-average-illinois-interstate.html"},"modified":"2026-09-25T05:48:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T05:48:34","slug":"walner-law-a-chicago-personal-injury-firm-finds-i255-crashes-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-fatal-as-the-average-illinois-interstate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/615520\/walner-law-a-chicago-personal-injury-firm-finds-i255-crashes-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-fatal-as-the-average-illinois-interstate.html","title":{"rendered":"Walner Law, a Chicago Personal Injury Firm, Finds I-255 Crashes Are Twice as Likely to Be Fatal as the Average Illinois Interstate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Walner<\/a><\/div>\n
Five-year study of 19 Illinois highways also finds I-57 leads the state in total deaths and I-290 packs nearly 20,000 crashes into 30 miles.<\/div>\n

CHICAGO, Ill. – 9\/25\/2026<\/strong><\/em> — More than 1,000 people die on Illinois roads each year, and a new analysis from Walner Law, a well-known Chicago personal injury firm, identifies which highways carry the greatest risk. Examining five years of state crash data (2021 to 2025) across 19 Illinois interstates, the firm’s personal injury attorneys ranked each highway by deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, a measure that accounts for how heavily each road is used rather than relying on raw crash counts.<\/p>\n

The study found that Interstate 255, a 27-mile stretch south of St. Louis along the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, is the state’s most dangerous highway overall. Crashes there turn fatal at more than twice the rate of the average Illinois interstate, and a single mile in St. Clair County accounts for six of the highway’s 17 deaths recorded over the five-year period.<\/p>\n

A Short Highway With an Outsized Death Toll<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interstate 57, which stretches 353 miles through rural, downstate Illinois, recorded the most total deaths of any highway in the study: 133 over five years, more than 65 of them on high-speed rural stretches where help takes longer to arrive. Interstate 290, the Eisenhower Expressway, covers only 30 miles through Cook County but produced nearly 20,000 crashes over the same period, the equivalent of roughly 11 collisions a day, giving it the highest crash rate of any highway examined.<\/p>\n

Nighttime and Trucks Compound the Risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interstate 94 carried the heaviest traffic of any highway studied, nearly 160,000 vehicles a day, and logged the highest crash total in the state at 40,000 collisions over five years. More than 70% of its fatalities occurred after dark. On Interstate 70, close to 40% of daily traffic is made up of trucks, the heaviest truck share among the state’s ten most dangerous highways, a factor researchers say raises risk for passenger vehicles sharing the road. Cook County appeared most often as the location of the single deadliest mile on the highways examined.<\/p>\n

Attorney’s Advice: Watch the Blind Spot, Not Just the Speedometer<\/em><\/p>\n

Jonathan Walner, Managing Attorney<\/strong> at Walner Law, said the firm’s caseload involving highway crashes, points to a recurring, preventable pattern. “I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who’ve been in serious highway crashes involving trucks, and the ones involving trucks almost always come back to the same thing,” Walner said. “On highways like the I-80 and I-70, where nearly a third of all traffic is trucks, the biggest mistake regular drivers make is hanging in a truck’s blind spot. If you can’t see the driver’s mirrors, they can’t see you. Pass quickly and get clear. And at night, stay at least five or six car lengths back. Truck drivers can’t react as fast in the dark, and the stopping distances are much longer than most people think.”<\/p>\n

The firm excluded highways with insufficient traffic data from the rankings to ensure statistically reliable results. Full findings, including data for all 19 interstates studied, are available in the report published on the Walner Law website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About Walner Law<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founded in 1973 and led today by Managing Attorney Jonathan Walner<\/strong>, Walner Law is a Chicago-based personal injury firm that has recovered more than $1 billion for injured clients throughout the Chicagoland area. The firm represents victims of car and truck accidents, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, workers’ compensation claims, and other personal injury matters.<\/p>\n

Media Contact<\/span>
Company Name:<\/strong> Walner Law<\/a>
Contact Person:<\/strong> Steve Miller
Email:<\/strong> Send Email<\/a>
Phone:<\/strong> 312.585.8890
Address:<\/strong>33 N LaSalle St #2700
City:<\/strong> Chicago
State:<\/strong> IL
Country:<\/strong> United States
Website:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.walnerlaw.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five-year study of 19 Illinois highways also finds I-57 leads the state in total deaths and I-290 packs nearly 20,000 crashes into 30 miles. CHICAGO, Ill. – 9\/25\/2026 — More<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}