SLIDESHOW: The Two Factors Driving U.S. Pedestrian Fatalities

Making cycling and walking safe, convenient and fun in Delaware

SLIDESHOW: The Two Factors Driving U.S. Pedestrian Fatalities

October 1, 2020 Safety 0

Last year 32 people were killed in Delaware for this “crime”:

they were walking

in the wrong place

at the wrong time

Very few of those deaths received any coverage in any Delaware media in 2019 beyond a short article with a few sentences paraphrasing a police report. So those 32 shattered families grieved in silence while the rest of the world took little note.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has designated October of 2020 as the first-ever National Pedestrian Safety Month. Unfortunately, while this will allow NHTSA to issue press releases that convey the impression to the public that it’s hard at work solving America’s catastrophic pedestrian safety crisis (over 6,000 people killed in 2019 – a 30 year high), the brutal reality is that effective responses are widely crippled in the U.S. by a profound lack of understanding about the underlying causes of fatal pedestrian crashes. Indeed, “National Pedestrian Safety Month” will feature weeks of advertising that will in the end amount to little more than spending millions of taxpayer dollars on systematic victim blaming.

To get beyond that deeply pernicious victim blaming and get behind real solutions, we need to understand the real causes. Bike Delaware recently analyzed ten years of national data on fatal pedestrian crashes (which Smart Growth America kindly shared with us) in order to do just that. To make that analysis easily understandable, we created the slideshow below. Please take a look:

  • Over 6,200 people were killed while walking in the U.S. in 2018: the highest number since 1990.
  • Delaware was #2 deadliest state for pedestrians (2009-2018).
  • Each congressional district has about 700K people.
  • The ten deadliest congressional districts for pedestrians
  • The ten deadliest congressional districts for pedestrians
  • The deadliest congressional district in the U.S. (in Phoenix) is an order of magnitude deadlier than the safest (Plano, Texas).
  • All of the ten deadliest congressional districts have below average median household incomes.
  • The congressional districts with the lowest median household incomes.
  • Some of America's poorest districts have low pedestrian fatality rates.
  • Poverty on its own is not necessarily a death sentence.
  • The 1st congressional district in Kentucky is poor but it's also safe for pedestrians. It is highly RURAL.
  • The 9th congressional district in Ohio is poor but it's also safe for pedestrians. It is a highly urban district covering Toledo and small cities bordering Lake Erie.
  • The 1st congressional district in West Virginia is poor but it's also safe for pedestrians. It is highly RURAL.
  • The 11th congressional district in Ohio is poor but it's also safe for pedestrians. It is a highly urban district covering Cleveland and Akron.
  • The deadliest districts are almost all poor "sunbelt" districts that boomed after the invention of air conditioning.
  • The ten deadliest congressional districts for pedestrians are almost all poor "sunbelt" districts that grew rapidly after the invention of air conditioning.
  • “Stroad” in Phoenix: Designed for high-speed vehicle movement but with lots of commercial development along the sides.
  • The deadliest districts in the U.S. are all characterized by low-density, post-World War II suburban sprawl and “stroads”.
  • High numbers of pedestrian fatalities are the product of a deadly combination of poverty and "stroad" miles.

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