New data shows which states were more deadly for pedestrians in 2023
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You should mention how rates of homelessness impact this as well. Reports from Oregon claim that traffic-related fatalities are 45 times more likely in the homeless population.
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I swear if aliens did show up here, they'd think cars were the dominant species. Heck they could be forgiven for thinking so when one of the biggest movie franchises involves living car-people.
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Some day we’ll make it friendly and comfortable to be outside a car in the US. The number of cities where you can comfortably live without a car I can count on 2 hands: DC, SF, Boston, NYC, Seattle, and Chicago. Nothing else even comes close which is a terrible shame. No wonder pedestrian deaths are so high.
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There's a reason I watch "not just bikes" so often. I dream of cities that deemphasize cars and emphasize walkability and so very many other city design changes (such as changing zoning laws) that would lead to the kinds of city designs people wanted to see back in 190X.
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The reason for this is because the whole thing helps fuel capitalism's insatiable 'infinite growth' pursuit. The further people can be forced to travel to get their goods, the fewer stores you need to operate, and the fewer employees it takes to run those stores. The rise of the modern super stores was a direct product of the automotive boom. Which is funny, since the online marketplace has since killed off a significant chunk of the audience those super stores relied on to stay afloat, so now they're going out of business (the mega warehouses are doing to super stores the same thing those stores did to mom'n'pop stores). But it's a whole lot cheaper to build a city from the ground up with pedestrians in mind than it is to retrofit existing cities into a pedestrian friendly one. Especially when the people holding the majority of the local wealth have no interest in paying to make cities they barely live in more accessible for people other than them. Inner cities being unwalkable is someone else's problem in their minds.
America -- the selfish asshole's paradise. Jesus would be 'proud.'
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Midblock crossings are nice because they vastly simplify and reduce the perceptual/cognitive workload for pedestrians and drivers alike, compared to corner crossings (especially where right turns on red and left turns are not regulated).
But with tall vehicles often parked close to the lines, midblock crossings do need to be equipped with some form of signaling (says Captain Obvious), and hopefully a curb bulb to punish the 1:10 drivers who didn't get good parenting.
But with tall vehicles often parked close to the lines, midblock crossings do need to be equipped with some form of signaling (says Captain Obvious), and hopefully a curb bulb to punish the 1:10 drivers who didn't get good parenting.
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One important thing not mentioned here - vehicle size and weight. Smaller, lighter vehicles both have better ability to spot pedestrians, and are less likely to kill them when there's a collision.
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We dedicate 40-60% of the surface areas of our cities to cars, effectively barring anyone not surrounded by several thousand pounds of metal from these spaces. Further, we have "vehicular manslaughter" laws which allow people in cars to kill people outside of cars for a lot less time in prison. I sat next to one widow on an airplane last year who watched her husband's killer get fined $500 for running over husband rushing to work doing 60 in a 25 MPH zone. Cool. Not.
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Meanwhile it's legal to sell pickup trucks which are actively advertised as having battering rams where the front bumpers should be. https://www.rezvanimotors.com/rezvani-hercules-6x6#hercules-6x6-features
Now yeah that specific one won't sell a lot but there's tons of custom mods of people replacing their front bumpers with steel battering rams, leaving on front two hitches that stick out past the grill (read: will puncture the other vehicle, or human being, in a crash), bullbars are explicitly legal in all 50 states, zero enforcement of stuff like huge lifts and tires that extend out past the frame of the vehicle...
I recently had a traffic enforcement officer tell me that the way he interprets the California vehicle code, which says no parking in the bike lane unless you're emergency services on a call for service or a utility company doing repairs ("I bought a huge vehicle and it doesn't fit" isn't a legal exception go figure), is that he can't ticket a vehicle which doesn't fit width-wise into a designated parking spot and juts into the bike lane because it would be "discriminating" against them for having a large vehicle.
City staff routinely park on the sidewalk, which destroys the sidewalk and exposes the city to liability from forcing people out into the road and potential ADA violations. NYPD got a ruling against parking on the sidewalk too but they're of course still doing it constantly.
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You've misunderstood much there. Firstly, I never suggested banning the automobile. Secondly, here in North America, most cities are not anywhere close to livably walkable. My own town, for example, it is literally impossible to actually get around this town without a car. There are barely any sidewalks, and some of the bridges don't have them either. That said, the next city over has made great strides in redesigning certain sections to be more walkable.
I am fully in favor of tram/trolley systems as well. What you miss completely is that degree matters. Accidents being "possible" isn't the issue, it's the sheer volume. Lessening the volume of accidents matters to every individual life saved. You SEEM to be arguing that so long as even one accident occurs, any efforts to drive it down to just that one don't matter. You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. When you make a city walkable, less people drive. Less cars on the road mean less accidents. Safer road design means the cars are travelling at speeds more compatible with pedestrians. Trams are also almost never involved in accidents because those rails are fixed positions where everyone can easily see the tram coming and can simply avoid the tracks and know to a certainty that the tram won't hit them.
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I have always assumed when the alien archaeologists arrive they will quickly surmise that dogs are in charge and lead bipedal fecal collection servants around on leashes. (Sorry cats, but you submit to using a litter box.)
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This billboard has been up in L.A.
California has fewer trucks than most other states, but the ones we have tend to be newer and bigger. And road speeds here are relatively high. Just last night a pedestrian was hit next to my house. Pedestrian walked away, thankfully, but they were crossing the street and a car, above the speed limit, didn't brake in time and hit them at a lowish speed. In my city you're more likely to die from being hit by a car than from any kind of violent crime. Nice that we have that other kind of violence relatively in check, but still not great.
California changed the law for road speeds starting this year. Rather than the old 85% rule rounded up to 5MPH, it now rounds down, and instead of the default speed for roads being 55MPH, it's now 25MPH, with the aforementioned road surveys adjusting it from there. (Contrary to popular belief, almost nowhere in the US do traffic engineers have any impact on the speed of a road, and almost nowhere does the design speed have any bearing on the actual speed limit). By midyear CA is supposed to publish a set of rules that will let cities lower speeds for safety purposes. We'll see what they look like, but the legislature is getting more serious about this problem, if SB 961 is any indication (mandatory speed limiters in cars).
California has fewer trucks than most other states, but the ones we have tend to be newer and bigger. And road speeds here are relatively high. Just last night a pedestrian was hit next to my house. Pedestrian walked away, thankfully, but they were crossing the street and a car, above the speed limit, didn't brake in time and hit them at a lowish speed. In my city you're more likely to die from being hit by a car than from any kind of violent crime. Nice that we have that other kind of violence relatively in check, but still not great.
California changed the law for road speeds starting this year. Rather than the old 85% rule rounded up to 5MPH, it now rounds down, and instead of the default speed for roads being 55MPH, it's now 25MPH, with the aforementioned road surveys adjusting it from there. (Contrary to popular belief, almost nowhere in the US do traffic engineers have any impact on the speed of a road, and almost nowhere does the design speed have any bearing on the actual speed limit). By midyear CA is supposed to publish a set of rules that will let cities lower speeds for safety purposes. We'll see what they look like, but the legislature is getting more serious about this problem, if SB 961 is any indication (mandatory speed limiters in cars).
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Douglas Adams named a character Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for this reason
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Pointillism
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I wonder if the extremely rainy weather California dealt with in early 2023 played any role in reducing the number of pedestrian deaths.
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Right on red rules constantly left me on edge as a pedestrian when I lived in the US. There were so many times on corner crossings where a driver would decide that it was safe to turn, and a little thing like a pedestrian wasn't going to stop them.
I always managed to get out of the way, but it always worried me. After living in Australia and Europe where such "turn on red" rules don't exist, and a green walk indicator seems inviolable, it felt like California really was the wild west as a pedestrian. So, in the end, I found myself driving more if a trip involved too many crossings. Even for trips that were just a mile down the road.
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Portland is extremely livable without a car. Has been for decades. Light rail, streetcar, bus, and bicycling. My wife and I lived carless there for five years by choice, at one point.
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Yes, you can.
Sadly those passenger vehicles, along with pedestrians and cyclists, can no longer see anything.
Apart from increased ride height, see also the very negative visibility effects of default-dark-tint windows and the prevalent SUV designs no longer having having a trunk/boot that you can see over. The modern vehicle landscape is so opaque!
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So, might makes right?
When does it end? Some of the newer trucks are so bad they need cameras so they can see what's in front of them.
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That only works if you have the height advantage. If all vehicles were pickup trucks, that advantage disappears.
It also decreases visibility in general for smaller vehicles. I drive a small hatchback, and when I'm surrounded by SUVs and trucks, it becomes a challenge. The hoods of some of those vehicles are higher than my driving position.
I could choose to get myself an even bigger vehicle, so I can see over the tops of them, but that would just make the situation worse for other road users, and the elevated driving position would make it more difficult to spot small, nearby objects. Puny child-sized humans, dwarfed by by new, ultra-tall ride, would be down there somewhere, rather than being at roughly the same height I am.
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Right on red being legal by default was passed as a fuel savings measure in the US decades ago. It does make sense from a waste less gas waiting on a green standpoint but it makes crossing on foot worse as the driver is looking the wrong way to see someone crossing in front of the vehicle.
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Yes, but smaller pedestrians can be completely hidden by the hood of a truck, especially a lifted or "squatted" one.
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And if you get struck by one, you are hit further up on your body (even as an adult) causing significantly more injury. You are also more likely to be thrown down and run over than tossed up on to the hood.
These giant SUV's are significantly more dangerous to pedestrians, cyclists, and even other drivers than a normal car.
This is from an iihs report (in this case, focused on cyclists rather than pedestrians, but the conclusions are still very enlightening):
"Ground-impact injuries — a frequent cause of head injuries — were more than twice as common in SUV crashes than those involving cars, the study showed. The findings follow earlier IIHS research that showed SUVs are more lethal than cars to pedestrians despite design changes that have made them less dangerous to other vehicles. That study also traced the increased risk to the height of SUVs’ front ends."
and
"The Abbreviated Injury Scale is used to assess injuries by body region. On it, the average scores for head injuries inflicted by SUVs were 63 percent higher than for those caused by cars."
(from this link: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/hi...makes-suv-crashes-more-dangerous-for-cyclists)
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I tried to find this 2023 report on the GHSA website. I could only find older pedestrian reports and unrelated reports. Did I miss a link to the report?
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Lots of times I see the comments in urbanism articles eventually devolve to the point where someone claims that they would rather live safely in a car-centric suburban or rural area than suffer the blight and danger of an urban area.
The response to that is to first acknowledge that people should like where they live, and if living in a rural or suburban area is someone's (quite reasonable) preference, then that is great.
But it is also worth pointing out that it is actually not necessarily true that less dense, rural areas are safer than dense cities when you add traffic fatalities to the mix.
For example (to pick a medium sized city that I am familiar with) Portland OR had a population of roughly 650,000 people in 2023. That year, they had 63 traffic fatalities and 74 homicides for a total of 137 deaths by these two causes (21.37 fatalities per 100K residents).
The state of Wyoming (population ~ 585,000) had 16 homicides and 137 traffic fatalities: a total of 160 deaths (27.40 fatalities per 100K residents).
Both in total number of deaths and per capita deaths, it is safer to live in “dense” Portland than “rural” Wyoming. Obviously this is a very rough calculation and only focuses on motor vehicle caused fatalities vs. injuries sustained by individuals from motor vehicles. It also ignores non-fatal but still violent crime. It also ignores overall health statistics (which tend to favor more urbanized areas fwiw).
But what it does do address the often ignored danger of living somewhere where driving is required when thinking about the safety of a particular region. *
Some other statistics on combined 2023 homicide/traffic fatalities per 100k residents:
**extrapolated. There had been 183 traffic deaths in the first 9 months of the year
* I understand that these are all motor vehicle-caused fatalities, not just pedestrian fatalities as described in the article. But it is still a relevant metric.
The response to that is to first acknowledge that people should like where they live, and if living in a rural or suburban area is someone's (quite reasonable) preference, then that is great.
But it is also worth pointing out that it is actually not necessarily true that less dense, rural areas are safer than dense cities when you add traffic fatalities to the mix.
For example (to pick a medium sized city that I am familiar with) Portland OR had a population of roughly 650,000 people in 2023. That year, they had 63 traffic fatalities and 74 homicides for a total of 137 deaths by these two causes (21.37 fatalities per 100K residents).
The state of Wyoming (population ~ 585,000) had 16 homicides and 137 traffic fatalities: a total of 160 deaths (27.40 fatalities per 100K residents).
Both in total number of deaths and per capita deaths, it is safer to live in “dense” Portland than “rural” Wyoming. Obviously this is a very rough calculation and only focuses on motor vehicle caused fatalities vs. injuries sustained by individuals from motor vehicles. It also ignores non-fatal but still violent crime. It also ignores overall health statistics (which tend to favor more urbanized areas fwiw).
But what it does do address the often ignored danger of living somewhere where driving is required when thinking about the safety of a particular region. *
Some other statistics on combined 2023 homicide/traffic fatalities per 100k residents:
| City or State | fatalities/100K | Traffic Fatalities | Homicides | Population |
| Vermont | 13.75 | 69 | 20 | 650K |
| Seattle | 13.9 | 28 | 74 | 734K |
| Montana | 21.64 | 203 | 35 | 1.1M |
| NYC | 6.96 | 203** | 386 | 8.5M |
**extrapolated. There had been 183 traffic deaths in the first 9 months of the year
* I understand that these are all motor vehicle-caused fatalities, not just pedestrian fatalities as described in the article. But it is still a relevant metric.
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I wish the map was continuous grades instead of 3.
Wonder what the rate correlates with? What are the conditions where people must interact with dangerous traffic and then die?
No way I’d walk or bike in the city near me because the cars are all in a huge hurry. Try crossing a 5 lane road where traffic is typically going 50mph in a 35…
Wonder what the rate correlates with? What are the conditions where people must interact with dangerous traffic and then die?
No way I’d walk or bike in the city near me because the cars are all in a huge hurry. Try crossing a 5 lane road where traffic is typically going 50mph in a 35…
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Given the rise of electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and just plain gasoline vehicles that have auto-stop/start on the engine, the fuel savings as the driving reason for allowing right on red is dissipating. It'd be nice if it could be repealed.
That being said, even existing locations with No Turn on Red signs aren't followed, and there is no enforcement to speak of, so people keep doing it. That being said, I have surprised people who have violated No Turn on Red signs by expressing my opinion by having whatever I have with me strike their vehicle...
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Here's some historical trivia! Germany uses, like some other European countries, a green arrow on traffic lights where it is permitted to turn right on red. These are static signs with a green arrow painted on them, not to be confused with arrow-shaped traffic lights for the turning lanes. In the German Democratic Republic "right on red" was actually a thing until the late seventies, at which time they introduced these green arrows. In the Federal Republic of Germany right on red was never a thing until the introduction of these devices.
I don't know how it is these days but ten, twenty years ago the smaller and less populated former-East-Germany-and-now-east-Germany-without-capital-E had as many or more of these signs than west Germany did. Many were removed over time, due to the amount of non-motorised injuries and fatalities experienced at these intersections.
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While conventional wisdom here in the U.S. is that left turns are the most dangerous, it's been my experience that right turns stress me out the most, because when I get a red light, I'm especially cautious about checking the timing of oncoming traffic to make sure it's safe... and the person behind me may just gets madder and madder if their conclusion is that I "could have made that". That social pressure has at times made my judgment less than it should have been, but I am pleased to say I've never been in an accident. Come to think of it, yes, left turns at places without traffic lights can be rather dangerous for the same reason.
Whatever I come across as here, in real life I'm very averse to confrontation.
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I thought I dreamed up that cartoon! I knew I got that joke from somewhere!
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How this has played out is now other people will get vehicles that are higher off the ground and bigger to feel "safer". And thus you have this spiral where we get bigger and bigger vehicles that are worse and worse for pedestrians. On top of that, these cars are even less efficient since you're packing less people into more space, which in aggregate makes traffic worse.
So it's just worse for everyone.
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I'd say left turns are the most dangerous to vehicle occupants. T-bone accidents are very dangerous to the driver and passenger-side fatalities can be answered by asking where that crumple zone is, exactly. Right turns tend to kill other people. Cyclists, pedestrians, those sorts of folk.
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