That's quite the leap.
A far more reasonable statement would be 'we need someone like Ralph Nader to spearhead initiatives to regulate self driving cars to prevent the disasters we saw in automobile safety in the 1950s-1960s.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
If there's a Ralph Nader effect in these data, it's hard to see.
Sure, there are fewer deaths per capita, and fewer deaths per mile traveled, but the chances of a fatality occurring at a given intersection haven't budged except in places where car-centric infra has been removed or scaled back.
Telling kids to stay inside during the day seems like fear mongering, but telling them to get home before dark is probably prudent. And don't let them drink (without supervision.)
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8130...
I'm not a proponent of "think of the children", but I also think that urban areas in the United States are largely designed in ways that put them at substantial risk of traffic fatalities. And I think that your data don't paint the rosy picture you seem to be using them for.
> Only 18% of pedestrian deaths occur at intersections,
You can also say that about 1-in-5 deaths occur at what are supposed to be the safest places for pedestrians to cross roadways. I'd expect it to be far more remote if in fact intersections were designed for people instead of cars.
> only 21% of pedestrian deaths occur during daylight.
I'm not sure this is particularly meaningful - are we to suppose that a civilized society is one in which death can take us, arbitrarily, at night for no good reason?
> Of the 6205 pedestrians killed in 2019
To be clear: this ICD code is very literal - it means people on foot. It does not include cyclists, people in mobility devices, people entering or exiting vehicles, and many other codes which are preventable by producing less car-centric infrastructure. It also does not include deaths from causes other than "traffic", such as those that occur in parking lots.
> The pedestrian fatality rate for adults is 10x higher than that for children (0.46 for 10-14 vs 4.6 for 55-59.)
I have no problem with the idea that adult pedestrian fatalities are a good target for reduction as well, but, as I've noted above, I can't help but notice that you (the report you cite) has focused on codes which are responsible for a higher proportion of adult deaths and which ignore substantial causes of pediatric mortality from cars.
> Furthermore, about a third of pedestrians killed were drunk.
I had a feeling the victim-blaming was coming.
> but telling them to get home before dark is probably prudent
"Prudent" is to stop subsidizing lethality by building cities for cars. Then kids can enjoy the stars without a taxpayer-subsidized death lottery for petro profit.
> And don't let them drink (without supervision.)
OK, yeah. That's a good one.
Considering way more people use crosswalks than walk across the middle of the street, only 1-in-5 pedestrian deaths occurring in a crosswalk seems like a very strong signal. Ignoring such an obvious consideration screams 'motivated reasoning'.
Following the traditional road safety advice keeps kids very safe: Use the crosswalk, look both ways, be home before dark and don't get drunk. Even accounting for all the failures to follow that advice, there are still only a few hundred child pedestrian deaths a year in a country with hundreds of millions of people. Calling it an "absolute bloodbath" is just sensationalism. I think you're just trying to scare people because you have an axe to grind against car culture for other reasons.
It is impossible to find good data on this, so I don't understand why you're using a tone of certainty in this assertion. Anecdotally, I find this difficult to believe; it seems to me that the opposite is true (at least here in St. Pete, Florida).
> Following the traditional road safety advice keeps kids very safe: Use the crosswalk, look both ways, be home before dark and don't get drunk.
"Traditional"? In what tradition? My tradition is not to put cars first and make kids avoid death by dancing around them.
Streets are for people. The idea that people need to be limited to crosswalks, exercise paranoia, and avoid them after dark suggests strongly that the points I'm making are very sound.
> there are still only a few hundred child pedestrian deaths a year in a country with hundreds of millions of people.
I don't think a few hundred deaths - among a cohort extremely unlikely to die of any cause - is anything to sneeze at. And again, you are ignoring other causes of death-by-car by focusing on this one ICD code. Why?
> you have an axe to grind against car culture for other reasons.
You got me. I'm a wealthy lobbyist for big bike. I'm sorry I didn't disclose this earlier.
Bike lobby huh? Usually the anti-car position is motivated by environmentalism, or the social/economic inequalities inherent to car culture that have been baked into our public infrastructure. Those would all be much better reasons than the number of children killed by cars, but bike lobby... I guess that works too.
While it's not impossible that you're telling the truth, I just don't believe that children killed by cars is really the root of your beef against cars. Rather, I think you're cynically using a "think of the children" argument to advance some other agenda (likely some combination of environmental, social and economic.) By the data, 'think of the children' is the lamest of all the plausible motives to oppose cars.
I do not work for a bike lobby, nor do I have any direct interest in the outcomes of these policies except extending the life of my kiddo and his friends.
I have no specific axe to grind. It's just absolutely obvious to me, from extensive travel through 49 of the United States, that children face dramatic and unprovoked hostility from the infrastructure through many of their cities.
The streets feel like they are literally made for cars instead of people. If you don't get that impression, then I really wonder what makes our perspectives so different.
* Stop widening roads
* Curb extensions
* Circles
* Diverters
* Humps
* Leave more roads unimproved
* Prohibit cars from city centers entirely, as is often the case in European citiesOr perhaps more to the point for the autonomous vehicle discussion: that no amount of hacking on the concept (which I fully support, and think is amazing and important work!), whether prompted by regulation or not, is likely to finally end the era of petro-carnage. For that, we need to stop using our tax dollars to build cities (and other roads) that are for cars first and people last.