A man was left with life-threatening injuries Thursday after a car struck him in a crosswalk near Arizona Mills in Tempe, prompting police to shut down a stretch of Priest Drive for hours. The collision happened near Darrow and Priest drives, just north of Baseline Road, in one of the city's busiest retail corridors.
According to AZ Family, the Tempe Police Department said a car was making a northbound left turn out of Arizona Mills when it struck the man in the crosswalk. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and police are still investigating what led up to the crash. Northbound Priest Drive was closed from Darrow Drive to Arizona Mills East as officers worked the scene, and drivers were urged to avoid the area.
A Corridor Already Flagged for Danger
The stretch of roadway where the man was hit sits at the heart of a commercial zone that regional planners have long identified as risky for people on foot. A 2024 regional design assistance application the City of Tempe submitted to the Maricopa Association of Governments shows Baseline Road near Arizona Mills carries more than 54,000 average daily vehicles, while Priest Drive itself handles over 24,000 — a combination that creates a high-severity collision area for pedestrians navigating the mall's entrances.
Under Arizona law, drivers are required to slow or stop for pedestrians in marked or unmarked crosswalks whenever traffic signals are absent or inactive, and vehicles approaching from behind are barred from passing a car that has stopped for someone crossing. That standard, laid out in Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-792 and detailed by AZ Law Now, exists because unmarked crosswalks are legally present at every intersection in the state unless marked otherwise.
A Pattern of Serious Crashes in the Same Area
Thursday's crash is not the first serious collision to hit this stretch of southwest Tempe. In January, a red-light runner caused a multi-vehicle crash at Baseline Road and Priest Drive — just south of Arizona Mills — that injured three people and involved two self-driving Waymo vehicles, closing the intersection for hours, as reported by the Daily Independent. The driver in that crash was later booked on DUI-related charges, a case Hoodline covered in its piece on the DUI arrest tied to the Waymo crash.
The corridor's history extends further back. In January 2024, Tempe police investigated a fatal pedestrian collision along Priest Drive near Broadway Road, where a person was struck and killed during evening hours, according to FOX 10 Phoenix. That case was part of a night with two fatal pedestrian incidents across Tempe that Hoodline detailed at the time.
City Response Under Vision Zero
Tempe has taken steps to address the danger along this corridor as part of its Vision Zero commitment, adopted in 2018. In May, the City Council passed an ordinance lowering posted speed limits by 5 mph across seven major corridors — including cutting Priest Drive's limit to 40 mph — after city crash data showed speed was a contributing factor in 21.8% of collisions on those roads, part of an effort Hoodline covered when the city lowered limits on seven streets.
The city also secured a $12.5 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant in September 2024 to install signalized pedestrian crossings and other safety upgrades along Baseline Road between Priest Drive and SR 101, where 35 fatal or serious injury crashes occurred between 2017 and 2021. Despite that investment, citywide numbers have moved in the wrong direction: total traffic collisions in Tempe rose from 6,585 in 2022 to 7,299 in 2023, while traffic fatalities climbed from 20 to 30 over the same period, according to the City of Tempe's data catalog.
A Statewide Problem
The Tempe crash also reflects a broader crisis on Arizona roads. Statewide, 263 pedestrians were killed in 2024, a fatality rate of 3.6 per 100,000 residents that is nearly double the national average, with 76% of fatal crashes occurring in darkness, per AZ Law Now. Maricopa County alone accounted for 1,516 pedestrian collisions and 158 pedestrian fatalities that year.
Any civil claims stemming from Thursday's crash would fall under Arizona's pure comparative fault statute, which allocates liability proportionally rather than barring recovery outright — meaning a pedestrian's compensation is reduced by their percentage of fault rather than eliminated, even if they were crossing outside a designated signal, AZ Law Now notes. Tempe police have not released further details on the man's condition or the driver involved, and the investigation into Thursday's collision remains open.
