New data shows which states were more deadly for pedestrians in 2023

Preliminary road-safety data for the first half of 2023 has been published.

See full article...

 

[Option 9]

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?

No such link in the article, nor in the other articles I checked after finding the GHSA website empty. Rather annoying, I must say. Dr Gitlin, how do journalists get these preliminary figures if there wasn't a press release? Did they send it out on a mailing list or something?

 

[Marlor_AU]

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.

Australia has a similar system of signs where turning on red (left in our case) is considered safe. However, contrary to our usual practice of abbreviating everything, we spell it out in its entirety: "LEFT TURN ON RED PERMITTED AFTER STOPPING". I guess there's no ambiguity there.

However, these signs aren't normally placed in areas where such a turn would clash with a pedestrian crossing. In such cases, it's more likely there would be a dedicated left-turn light synchronised with the crossing.

The key thing is that such locations are selectively chosen, and the default isn't to allow a turn. In the US, it seems that even where there are signs saying "No Turn on Red", those instructions are interpreted as a gentle suggestion at best.

 

[JerryLove]

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.

And in the US cars, by law, are designed with an element of pedestrian safety. They are designed that, if you are hit, you go over the car rather than under it. They are designed to soften the hit against the hood to reduce injury.

Trucks are exempt from this and appear to completely ignore pedestrian safety.

 

[bvz_1]

And in the US cars, by law, are designed with an element of pedestrian safety. They are designed that, if you are hit, you go over the car rather than under it. They are designed to soften the hit against the hood to reduce injury.

Trucks are exempt from this and appear to completely ignore pedestrian safety.

I'm not sure that that is true. I don't think there are any pedestrian safety related regulations in the U.S. when it comes to vehicle design. Any cars that have improved pedestrian safety features are generally designed that way because they are intended to be sold world-wide, and other areas (the EU for example) actually do have pedestrian safety regulations. We are just "lucky" to have some of that filter to the U.S.

Currently there is some discussion whether to adopt the EU's pedestrian safety laws, but I am guessing that that will be a non-starter for mostly political reasons.

 

[74181]

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.

As always, Arthur C. Clarke has been there before!

In his short story "History Lesson", venusian archeologists explore the Earth 5.000 years after mankind has perished in the 20th century..

They are only able to retrieve a single artifact that gives them a deeper understanding on how humans looked and acted: A film reel!

After they figure out how to project it onto a screen, here's how Clarke describes what they see:

"Then came a furious drive over miles of country in a four wheeled mechanical device which was capable of extraordinary feats of locomotion. The ride ended in a city packed with other vehicles moving in all directions at breathtaking speeds. No one was surprised to see two of the machines meet head-on with devastating results."

Unfortunately, the reel ends with a line of text they are never able to decipher:

"............. A Walt Disney Production ............"

 

[dizdizzie]

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).

You need to start designing and building streets for lower speeds so people will instinctively slow down. People won't slow down when residential streets in California can be as wide as 12 meteres (40 feets). So you park cars on both sides of the street and still lanes are at least as wide as on the interstate (3,7 meters). 12 meteres is twice as wide as the recommendation for streets where buses drive (6 meters). Without buses the recommended width is 5,5 meters. Often much less where there is minimal traffic.


Compare this:

12 Avignon Ave
https://maps.app.goo.gl/WDKdUSSKawY6Zzjc7
With this:

6 Ciechocińska
https://maps.app.goo.gl/r1YipGXoxTNSCrFo7

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

Yes, they already have.

Yes, they already have.

 

[iim]

I had a cousin who was killed crossing the street by one of those large dual axle trucks. I’m not sure what they’re called but it has a double wheel in the back she was not only run over by the truck, but she was pulled into the rear axle and wrapped her into it. She was shredded alive. I’ll never forget my mother telling me this.

 

[Mr.Elendig]

Or, you know.,. don't jaywalk?

20mph is absolutely ridiculous.. and contrary to good engineering practice which is to set the speed limit at the 85th percentile.

Setting the speed limit based on how fast people drive is not good engineering practice, it's insanity put into practice.

And "jaywalking" shouldn't be a thing, read up on the history of those laws. It is not pretty.

 

[jack1983]

It's appalling how far behind Europe the US has fallen on this.

It's especially bad when you consider that Americans don't walk very much compared to Europeans, and yet still get killed at a far higher rate.

In fact, on a "per mile walked" basis, you are 5 to 10 times more likely to be killed in a collision as a pedestrian compared to the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. (see here).

 

[Option 9]

20mph is absolutely ridiculous.

Why? Where I live the speed limit in built-up areas is 50km/h (31mph) and many residential areas are restricted to 30km/h (18.6mph). In practice this means arterials are 30mph while the remaining ones (streets, collectors) are 20mph.

 

[Option 9]

….you’re completely ignoring that the total fatalities in Wyoming occurred over an area roughly 730x larger than the city of Portland.

Why does that matter? Land doesn't kill people. If this were about the amount of sinkholes per capita, sure. More land probably means more sinkholes. This was about urban vs rural fatalities (from homicide and traffic, an odd pairing). More rural living => more driving => more crashes. If you controlled for miles driven you might get information about road and driver quality but when the question is "are you safer in a rural area?" the fact that the average person will drive more and that the average person will have a higher chance of ending twenty feet from a telephone pole matters.

 

[GMBigKev]

I'm not surprised by Florida but am by Virginia. One of the biggest issues is the stroad design that's common a lot in US suburbs where traffic still goes 35-40 MPH (it was 45 here where I live up until last year) but there's common crossings and sidewalks into housing developments with strip malls across the way. The stroad design is particularly bad because it emphasizes speed of driving and there are just not enough pedestrian crossings to make them viable. There's a whole section of road near where I live that there's two crosswalks and no signals and half of that road is a big apartment complex.

We also have the issue of bus stops being smack-dab in the center of the block so people run across the road to try to get to the bus stop when they see the bus coming because by the time they reach the corner, wait for the signal to change, cross, and then go back up the road to reach the bus stop that bus is LONG gone.

 

[Factorial]

It’s far too slow.
Where I live.. it used to be that typically local roads were at 40km/h, collectors at 50km/h and arterials at 60km/h. They’ve since arbitrarily lowered those limits (using Orwellian speed cameras to strictly enforce, for.. rea$on$), ostensibly for a highly dubious claim of “safety”.

Reaction time is linearly dependent on speed, but stopping and impact is dependent on the cruel mistress called (m*v^2) / 2.

The data is, unsurprisingly, therefore what it is:

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Resources3/08 - The Relation Between Speed and Crashes.pdf

"The exact relation between speed and crashes depends on many factors. However, in a general sense the relation is very clear: if on a road the driven speeds become higher, the crash rate will also increase. The crash rate is also higher for an individual vehicle that drives at higher speed than the other traffic on that road. As speeds get higher, crashes also result in more serious injury, for the driver who caused the crash as well as for the crash opponent."

Not to speak of secondary health effects like noise or pollutants due to road wear. And making the cities nicer to walk and bike around, or just sit outside, as a result.

 

[SimonW]

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.

It's funny you say DC because one of the times I visited, I went to the National Air & Space Museum. I then had a few hours to kill and thought I'd walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, White House, and back to Adam's Morgan. I asked two different people which was the general direction and they both told me it was too far to walk and I should get a cab. I then decided to ask a jogger who had a better appreciation of manageable distances. Sure, it was a fair walk - about 5.5 miles - but it was a really nice walk.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Not quite the red & blue state graphic we're used to.

Doesn't really show that either. It does show one single delineator of states with a higher proportion of vehicular death than an arbitrary number, but doesn't really say anything about whether one state has 5 or 10 to another state's 2 or 3, for instance.

Here's a cherry-picked statistics graph which might bring things back to familiar territory again;

The top twenty certainly includes a few northern states but just look at the top twelve or so...

 

[GMBigKev]

It's funny you say DC because one of the times I visited, I went to the National Air & Space Museum. I then had a few hours to kill and thought I'd walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, White House, and back to Adam's Morgan. I asked two different people which was the general direction and they both told me it was too far to walk and I should get a cab. I then decided to ask a jogger who had a better appreciation of manageable distances. Sure, it was a fair walk - about 5.5 miles - but it was a really nice walk.

I'd probably be in the first batch of locals because a lot of people seriously think DC is tiny and you can go across the entire mall in like... five minutes but it's a 2 mile long stretch. You're in for a haul if you want to go that far. If you'd then clarified you're in for the hike I'd be more apt to tell you.

 

[entropy_wins]

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.

Ford Prefect?

 

[Mr_Spock]

I’ve debated getting bumper stickers that say “warning - I stop for stop signs” and “speed limits exist”. The former is especially needed - I nearly get rammed multiple times a day because I have reading comprehension.

 

[bigmushroom]

Not sure what the figure with increases and decreases is supposed to teach us. Even with static death rates half the states would see an increase from year to year and half a decrease. A more meaningful measure would be two standard deviation change - not even that hard since a standard deviation in this application is very close to the square root of the number of fatalities per state.

 

[Jiggers]

Willing to wager the states with the highest rates are also the states with more STROAD mileage.

 

[ElCameron]

State level data is absolutely useless in this analysis.

 

[xcodemustdie]

OK a pretty strong north vs south divide.

I propose its due to their being more people outdoors esp in the first 6 months of the year, because the outside temperatures are higher,
ergo more pedestrians = more pedestrians killed

 

[Thorzdad]

Not quite the red & blue state graphic we're used to.

As an aside...I do infographics, and that initial graphic kinda irks me. The states where deaths increased should be in red, not blue. A quick cursory glance at the red/blue graphic would lead most people to assume the death rate stats were the opposite of what they actually are. That’s just basic color psychology, red=bad.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

It's funny you say DC because one of the times I visited, I went to the National Air & Space Museum. I then had a few hours to kill and thought I'd walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, White House, and back to Adam's Morgan. I asked two different people which was the general direction and they both told me it was too far to walk and I should get a cab. I then decided to ask a jogger who had a better appreciation of manageable distances. Sure, it was a fair walk - about 5.5 miles - but it was a really nice walk.

DC is extremely walkable and has pretty decent public transport, at least until our awful mayor messes with it.

 

[x14]

The north-south map division is quite interesting and unexpected. Also, why are Maryland and DC exceptions to that pattern? I guess the take away is, if you are worried about getting run over in the street, move north.
(Edit: Or, is it the other way around because the map legend is confusing?)

 

[darknights0]

Here's the source which includes more data and interactive maps:
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians24

 

[Asecondname]

The article explains the North South divide.

Here, we can see the influence of both the natural and built environments at work—the report points out that these states have both warmer climates, which prompt more people to walk, and urban areas that were developed after the ascendency of the automobile, meaning more car-centric urban design. New Mexico fares worst of all on this measure, with a pedestrian death rate of 1.99 per 100,000 inhabitants during the first half of 2023, far higher than the nationwide average of 1.01 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

The north-south map division is quite interesting and unexpected. Also, why are Maryland and DC exceptions to that pattern? I guess the take away is, if you are worried about getting run over in the street, move north.
(Edit: Or, is it the other way around because the map legend is confusing?)

Because Maryland is a joke when it comes to things like driver education, driver licensing, mandating insurance, and so on. You’ll never see more lawless driving in the US than you will around Maryland license plates.

 

[Litazia]

Yes, they already have.

Dang it, you got here first. At least I have a link to the video:


View: https://youtu.be/wFaHArkYLsM

 

[Dark Jaguar]

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.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsFc2gguEg

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Or, you know.,. don't jaywalk?

20mph is absolutely ridiculous.. and contrary to good engineering practice which is to set the speed limit at the 85th percentile.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_3c3wqPsJo


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc


And now, you are educated and won't repeat what you just said.

 

[chiasticslide]

Because Maryland is a joke when it comes to things like driver education, driver licensing, mandating insurance, and so on. You’ll never see more lawless driving in the US than you will around Maryland license plates.

I mean, the biggest culprit in the Baltimore area is the underground market for VA temp tags, which allow drivers to avoid having to register with the MVA and also avoid having insurance. And then the fact that no traffic laws are being enforced in the city. And the panhandlers and squeegee workers at every intersection walking into traffic. And the crumbling infrastructure...

 

[Hapticz]

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.

as for the foot traffic, they suffer too often without accessible shoulders, walkways and limited public transportation options. lighting may 'protect' the people, who reeeely don't desire to become 'squishy, bumper food', but it is yet another bonus for the fools inside a steel/plastic road weapon to offset their own inability to GIVE A DAMN during their sprees of inattention, foreplay, music/phone/drug indulgence and screaming child distractions.

i will ride my bike ON THE SIDEWALK violating those prissy legal asses rights when the shoulders are a scant 4 inches from drive lanes to the unforgiving steel guardrails, steel rope/post and vertical 2.5 foot high concrete barriers (that are designed to save the cars only).

the federal dot is perhaps one of the worst agencies regarding wholesale safety for pedestrians, they seem to consider pedos an inconvenience to design for, making a simple traverse from A to B extensively longer than car roadway paths.

and many interstate bridges dont even consider incorporating pedestrian accessibility. what? get a canoe or swim across? even Eisenhowers great idea was FLAWED!

the police are just as bad, laying blame on the sloooow moving persons that get in the way of speeding, reckless and ignorant vehicle owners.

even a 20MPH limit is too high to easily crush people in the dead of the night with noxious LED glare blazing throughout the countrysides.

homeless? this isnt about them, this issue is the vehicle industry, the promotion of senseless and wasteful expenditure of energy, time and the 'social distancing' it promotes.

and as for the instant downvotes, go chew on a rubberband..

 

[Spirko]

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?

Maybe it was just published on their website and the media got an early copy. Here it is:

https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians24