Chicago South & Southwest Suburbs Personal Injury Lawyers
Serving Joliet, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Plainfield, Lockport, Mokena, New Lenox, Tinley Park, Orland Park, Frankfort, Matteson, Homewood, Flossmoor, and Park Forest across Will and southern Cook Counties.
About the Chicago South & Southwest Suburbs Region
The Chicago South and Southwest Suburbs encompass Will County — one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States over the past two decades — and the south Cook County suburban communities, anchored by Joliet at the I-55, I-80, and I-57 convergence and extending through the rapidly growing southwest Will County communities of Plainfield, Romeoville, Bolingbrook, and New Lenox. This is a region defined as much by its extraordinary commercial freight concentration as by its residential growth, because Will County sits at the intersection of some of the most active commercial truck corridors in North America. Joliet is the region's dominant crash concentration point and one of the most significant commercial truck traffic environments in the Midwest. I-80, the nation's second-longest interstate, runs east-west through Joliet carrying the largest volume of transcontinental commercial freight of any highway in the Chicago area. I-55 runs northeast-southwest through Joliet connecting the metro to St. Louis and the Mississippi River corridor. I-57 provides the south connection toward southern Illinois, Missouri, and the Lower Mississippi Valley. The intersection of these three major freight corridors within the Joliet metropolitan area produces commercial truck volumes that are matched in the Chicago suburbs only by the O'Hare freight zone, and the crash outcomes when commercial vehicles of 80,000 pounds or more are involved in collisions with passenger vehicles are among the most severe in all of Illinois. The growth of Will County's residential communities — Plainfield, Romeoville, Bolingbrook, Mokena, New Lenox, and Frankfort — has added enormous suburban commuter traffic to a highway network that was already serving one of the nation's most active commercial freight corridors. The mismatch between the highway infrastructure's freight-optimized design and the commuter needs of a rapidly growing suburban population creates crash conditions that are particularly dangerous in the merge and weave zones where suburban residential traffic enters and exits the commercial freight corridors. Biazzo Injury Law is proud to represent accident victims throughout the Chicago South and Southwest Suburbs and help them pursue the compensation they deserve.
Regional Accident Profile
Largest Counties in Region
Will County
Will County is the Chicago South and Southwest Suburbs' primary crash county, driven by the I-80 commercial freight corridor, the Joliet multi-interstate convergence, and the residential growth of the county's southwest communities. I-80 through Will County carries the largest volume of transcontinental commercial freight of any highway in the Chicago suburbs, with trucks moving between the massive intermodal rail facilities of Joliet — which are among the largest in North America — and the national highway network in all directions. The I-55 corridor through Bolingbrook and Romeoville northward toward Chicago adds additional commercial freight volume, as does the I-57 south corridor. The Will County intermodal facilities — BNSF's Logistics Park Chicago and Union Pacific's Global 4 terminal — generate truck traffic on the surrounding road network that is among the most concentrated of any inland freight distribution hub in the country.
Fatal crashes in Will County are disproportionately driven by commercial vehicle involvement on I-80 and I-55, with the mass disparity between 80,000-pound tractor-trailers and passenger vehicles producing catastrophic outcomes in crashes at freeway speeds. The I-80/I-55 interchange near Joliet is one of the highest crash-severity interchange areas in Illinois, where trucks decelerating from I-80 highway speeds to navigate the interchange meet passenger vehicles in merge and weave zones that are not designed for the volume and mass diversity of traffic they handle. Crashes involving drivers distracted by navigation in an unfamiliar interchange area — the Joliet interchange requires multiple lane changes in a compressed distance — are a documented fatal crash pattern.
Cook County — South Suburbs
The south Cook County suburban communities — Tinley Park, Orland Park, Matteson, Homewood, Flossmoor, Olympia Fields, and Park Forest — generate crash activity driven by the I-57 corridor, the US-30 (Lincoln Highway) surface arterial, and the suburban commercial development that has concentrated along these corridors in communities that are largely bedroom suburbs for Chicago employment. The I-57 corridor through south Cook County carries both the commercial freight load of the south suburban freeway network and the commuter traffic of residents traveling to Chicago employment, creating a morning southbound and evening northbound crash pattern driven by congestion and the mixing of high-speed freight and commuter travel. The Matteson-to-Tinley Park commercial development zone on US-30 and Cicero Avenue generates access-point conflict crashes consistent with dense suburban commercial strip development.
Fatal crashes in south Cook County occur on I-57 where commercial truck involvement and high speed produce severe impacts, on US-30 through the south suburban commercial corridor where access points and speed combine on a surface road carrying volumes it was not designed to manage, and at the interchange areas connecting south Cook County to the Will County freight corridors where the transition between commercial freight and residential traffic creates the conditions for serious crash events.
What Are the Most Dangerous Roads in the Region?
Interstate 80 (I-80) — Joliet & Will County Corridor
Interstate 80 through Will County and Joliet is one of the most commercially significant and crash-intensive highway segments in Illinois. As the nation's second-longest interstate, I-80 carries transcontinental commercial freight from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Mountain West through Chicago and to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, and the Will County section — where I-80 passes through the largest intermodal rail-truck transfer hub in North America — carries one of the highest commercial truck densities of any urban-adjacent highway in the country. The BNSF and Union Pacific intermodal facilities at Joliet generate constant truck traffic on I-80 and the adjacent road network as containers move between rail and truck in one of the most active freight transfer operations on the continent. When crashes occur on I-80 through Will County involving the tractor-trailers serving these facilities, the injuries sustained by passenger vehicle occupants reflect the catastrophic mass disparity that characterizes all serious truck-car collision events — and the claim values reflect the serious and permanent nature of those injuries.
Interstate 55 (I-55) — Bolingbrook & Romeoville Corridor
Interstate 55 through the Bolingbrook and Romeoville communities in northern Will County is the primary corridor connecting the southwest suburbs to downtown Chicago and simultaneously the primary freight corridor for goods moving between the southwest Chicago suburbs and St. Louis and the Mississippi River corridor. The transition between the more congested northern section — where suburban density creates peak-hour backup conditions with associated rear-end and lane-change crashes — and the more open southern section through Romeoville and toward Joliet creates a speed variation environment where drivers accustomed to congested travel encounter open road and may accelerate into crash-risk conditions. The I-55/I-355 interchange in Bolingbrook is one of the south suburban's highest crash-concentration interchange locations, where the Bolingbrook residential community's traffic intersects the freight corridor and the tollway in a complex multi-level interchange.
U.S. Route 30 (US-30) — Lincoln Highway South Suburbs
U.S. Route 30 — the historic Lincoln Highway — running east-west through the south Cook County suburban communities from Matteson through Tinley Park, Orland Park, and westward through New Lenox toward Joliet is the primary surface commercial arterial of the south and southwest suburban corridor. The highway carries an enormous mixture of through-freight, local commercial, and residential traffic through a continuous strip of commercial development that generates access-point conflict crashes throughout its length. The Matteson-area concentration of large-format retail and commercial development on US-30 creates traffic conditions where high volumes of shopping and service traffic enter and exit the highway at numerous access points with limited sight distance and inadequate deceleration lanes, producing the access-conflict crash pattern that is characteristic of commercial strip development on high-volume arterials. Long-haul truck traffic that chooses US-30 over the freight-designated I-80 adds commercial vehicle crash exposure to the surface commercial strip environment.
Explore the cities we serve across the Chicago South and Southwest Suburbs:
