Alternatively, I wonder if it is attributable to increased smartphone use by pedestrians and or drivers.
Personally, I find operating the UI on phone navigation and audio players very cognitively taxing.
If you are interested in a deeper dive “Right of Way” by Angie Schmidt is good review of the current research. The biggest issue is the increasing market share of SUVs and trucks which are both more likely to hit and kill pedestrians. Other issues are an increase of poor residents in suburban areas that were not meant for walking, and road design that only considers car efficiency (consider the implications of setting walk sign duration to the average pace of an able bodied middle age male - wheel chair users and the elderly are heavily represented in fatalities).
Mixed use roads can mean a lot of things, but narrowing streets actually reduces fatalities because it serves as a traffic easing measure (see Vision zero).
My personal take is yes part of the problem is infrastructure, and academics who study systems will hone in on that, but the other problem is the complete abdication of personal responsibility in American society. Politicians are too afraid to hold middle class voters accountable for traffic violence or anything else really. The flip side of personal freedom is having to face the consequences of your actions. In some states a DUI conviction does not automatically suspend the drivers license. So I do appreciate left leaning politicians attempting to improve infrastructure, but my concern is these measures are being used to carefully avoid blaming individuals for their actions this laundering society’s terrible driving habits (which I really do think could be changed through social norming and enforcement.
I am very biased though. I’ve almost been hit by multiple cars this year who failed to yield to pedestrians in the cross walk.
I'm also frustrated by squandered opportunities for improvement. One example: allowing red-light cameras to become a money grab by revenue sharing with the suppliers and thus subject to lobbying, influence and gaming like shortening yellow lights and buffer times to increase $$$. That crap has created political resistance to the concept. The frustrating part is that few people would oppose putting red light cameras on most major, high-traffic, >35mph intersections - as long as they were restricted to only sending an automatic warning to "orange light sliders" but triggered serious enforcement and even in-person follow-up for the rare (but deadly) people who fly through at high-speed long after other traffic is actually crossing the intersection.
Over the past decade, I've almost been broadsided twice by people barreling through a major, multi-lane intersection at high-speed while I'm turning left on an arrow. This despite other cars in the lane next to theirs already being stopped and waiting at the light. I was saved only by being super-cautious and going slow or halting when I noticed the oncoming car not slowing at all. If there had been a truck blocking my view of their approach, I would probably have been hospitalized (or worse) in the collision. It's hard to imagine the oncoming driver doing this intentionally as both times it was clearly near-suicidal.
Now that the capability to do fairly discerning automatic detection is low cost thanks to cheap imagers and processing, detecting those rare yet dangerous people (who are likely drunk, high or possibly even having brief 'waking blackouts' without knowing it) could help get them off the road before they actually kill someone. The benefit to narrowing the 'targeting' for enforcement is that instead of dozens or hundreds of revenue generating tickets per day, we'd be finding a handful of potentially deadly near-incidents. A number small enough that each could be carefully reviewed and the scary ones could get not only a ticket but a welfare check from community liaison officers.
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/GHSA-Pedest...
I was surprised to see a few things that ran counter to my intuition:
A large number of pedestrian fatalities, 16%, occurred on freeways, which include interstates.
Only about 25% of pedestrian fatalities in 2018 occurred at intersections.
76% of pedestrian fatalities in 2018 occurred after dark, and daytime fatalities have not seen the same dramatic increase.
33% of fatally injured pedestrians ages 16 and older had a BAC of 0.08 or higher and 16% of drivers had a BAC of 0.08 or higher.
Total pedestrian deaths from passenger cars has gone up more than total deaths from SUVs (but SUV deaths are increasing faster as a % of baseline).
What I’m getting at is that there’s a million instances of drivers blatantly disobeying the law and people get hurt. Recently in my city a woman lost her leg after being struck by a car when walking across the street with her kids. And in my state, if the driver wasn’t drunk or intent can’t be proven, the driver is given a slap on the wrist.
The lack of consequences trains people that these laws do not need to be followed. Look at some of the recent high profile cases. Teen strikes 6 cyclists trying to coal roll them - no charges filed yet. Man swerved into bike lane killing NFL coach - no charges. Dakota DA kills man drunk with his car and flees - no charges.
Even speeding we’ve normalized to a crazy degree. It’s insanely dangerous but people joke about it like it’s nothing. When someone gets a speeding ticket we commiserate with them instead of showing disapproval. It’s no accident our roads are so dangerous. Our society is completely complacent to the human suffering caused by car violence.
The problem with just giving people a pass is that it forces the victims to pay the full cost of the externalities. Someone’s got to pay. Yes it sucks for the driver who made a mistake, but it also sucks for the family who lost a breadwinner or caregiver or the company who lost an employee. When people have to share the cost, people will price in the cost of their actions when they decide to drive.