Report: U.S. pedestrian death rate increased during COVID
usa.streetsblog.org
usa.streetsblog.org
The title is incredibly misleading. The reason to compare pedestrian deaths to population is because more pedestrians with an equal death rate leads to more pedestrian deaths. So far the comparison is clear.
What you cannot do however is to compare the relative difference in relative growth rates. That's one level of 'relative' comparison too far. Heck the population could very well have been constant over 3 years (it is decreasing in some countries) so if you're dividing some positive number by the relative population growth then you're going to end up with a bigger number, but that fact is meaningless.
The phrasing suggests that the chance of getting injured has increased 9 times, but it hasn't, it's increased about 16% (the 1.18 times more deaths divided by 1.02 more people). Other than evaluating the relative risk there is no sensible reason to compare it to population, so any other calculation simply does not make sense. Unless you're willing to say it had decreased 18 times faster had the population shrunk by 1%.
Really well earned use of 'hang on' there, sounds like the article is bollocks
This should have been the title of the post, or, if not, then a very close approximation of it.
What's worse is that going by the title alone I had suspected some clickbait-y foul play, because many of today's articles that rely on numbers or stats have start resorting to those tactics.
Otherwise you get silly things like their claim that New Hampshire has seen a whopping 150% increase in pedestrian deaths from 2021 to 2022.
They went from 2 to 5.
since "2019, the last pre-pandemic year, pedestrian fatalities have surged 18 percent in just three years – nine times faster than U.S. population growth," the report said.
Comparing the number of fatalities to population growth makes sense because one would increase naturally with the other.
The per capita or per 100,000 rise would be meaningful. You don't get the per capita rise by dividing the rise in fatalities by the rise in population growth.
I agree the numbers used in the article are not the most explicit, though.
It only makes sense if we compare the number of fatalities to number of pedestrians growth.
More people doesn't necessarily means more pedestrians.
For example: a car ban like there are in many European city centres, leads to a growth of the number of pedestrians in the area, not linked to a growth in the general population.
EDIT: counting population growth as a proxy for pedestrian growth is a spurious correlation.
Population can grow and pedestrian could go down in number and vice-versa, it is been observed in the past 20 years as a result of the fluctuation of urban areas population VS suburb/non-urban areas population.
I'll try anyway to express my though again.
As an example: The analysis by the Governors Highway Safety Association, a nonprofit that represents state highway safety offices, found that pedestrian deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic had spiked significantly, as speeding and impaired and distracted driving proliferated
Now it would be incorrect to say that COVID-19 is dangerous for pedestrians, even though it happened due to COVID-19, the root cause has been speeding and impaired and distracted driving.
In the same way population growth is not directly correlated linearly to an increase of the number of pedestrians fatalities.
If, for example, a family of 2 moves into a new city but they never leave the house because they are both old and disabled, the population has grown, but the risks for pedestrians haven't.
In the case I used in the previous comment, more people walking doesn't correlate with more fatalities, it's in fact the opposite. There are more people walking, true, but in a much safer space for them.
So population growth makes sense as an health problem only if it produces more pedestrians, in particular more pedestrians at risk.
For example an higher driver/pedestrian ratio, which in the end is the same thing of more pedestrians. To use a bad analogy, for which I apologize in advance, it doesn't matter if there are more "targets" for cars to hit or more cars are hitting more of the same number of "targets", the result is roughly the same.
If we look at it as an health problem the only conclusion that makes sense is that the less pedestrians and other road vehicles cross their paths, the more pedestrians fatalities will go down, regardless of population growth.
> Is someone waiting for a bus or uber a pedestrian?
> Is someone walking in a parking lot to thier car a pedestrian?
I'm quite sure they are are literally not, the article uses the term "pedestrian" in the title but then it uses "walkers" in the text, it looks quite clear that they are referring to people walking on public spaces as a means of travel.
pedestrian
/pɪˈdɛstrɪən/
noun: pedestrian; plural noun: pedestrians
a person walking rather than travelling in a vehicle.There's always better data, and making a study that doesn't have any spurious correlations is extremely expensive. Pedestrian growth is also not necessarily linearly correlated to pedestrian fatalities. If cities become more walkable, it could be that there are more pedestrians walking shorter distances. I would expect that to impact fatalities per pedestrian less than having more pedestrians walking the same amount.
This data just says that the growth in population isn't likely the direct cause of the effect. It could be a difference in the demographics of the population (new people walk more/less). It could be a difference in the existing pedestrians (i.e. % of pedestrians is constant, but people are walking at night or with headphones, etc). It could be a difference in the existing drivers (more dangerous cars, more dangerous driving, more DUIs, etc).
They have a clear anti-car agenda, they seem to be pro public transportation but even that's questionable
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/05/07/opinion-roll-back-cuo...
However. Why oh why did this author trash their own credibility by explicitly citing the "even more alarming [surge] at the state level" where "walker deaths had increased a shocking 266.67 percent in Nebraska, 150 percent in New Hampshire, and 87.5 percent in Delaware." They of course give the bare minimum caveat that "[t]hose dramatic numbers are partly explained by those states' small populations," but they are entirely explained by those states' small pedestrian fatality rates. Such as New Hampshire's increase from 2 to 5 fatalities. The other two "alarming" surges are equally unmentionable[1] in the light of actually reading the numbers.
I do have to give them credit for including the relevant numbers directly in an image in the article so that I didn't have to do any digging to figure out why those states had such high increases. But that just makes me even more baffled why they didn't catch themselves.
[1] Literally unmentionable, as in: those particular percentages cannot in good conscience be mentioned anywhere near a self-respecting argument for transportation reform.
I’m all onboard the accuracy train with you, but I must say that describing any kind of traffic death as “irrelevant” seems very cold. Every person that dies on the road matters.
That doesn't sound irrelevant to me. Drivers around my area have a tendency to not quite stop at stop signs before rolling into the crosswalk. If they're going slower they have more ability to react to a pedestrian stepping out into the crosswalk.
And is it even a rate at all? They give number of fatalities, but how does that compare to the number of pedestrians? Or rather number x time spent walking? Car statistics are often given in terms of total miles traveled, for instance. A total is not a rate.
Totally agree our streets are way too dangerous, and being a pedestrian can be terrifying. That really needs to be fixed.
But not in a misleading way. If anything, things like this might scare people out of walking, meaning less pedestrians, and therefore less reason to solve it. That's counterproductive.
I follow streetsblog regularly, because, like you, I also think the message they are advocating for is important and more or less completely neglected in the United States, though a few cities/states are getting better. Cops regularly victim blame when pedestrians or cyclists are hit by cars, and people who kill others with their cars often have no consequences whatsoever. When I was still living in the US, I didn't feel my children were safe in traffic, ever. They do this stuff so much better in many other parts of the world.
That being said, that blog's writing style is really grating at times. They often raise these sort of scandalizing points in posts that are otherwise on point. I don't know why, maybe to produce sound bytes, maybe because the authors are so personally invested in the topic they can't help but exaggerate, or whatever.
It's really annoying.
As I was using a crosswalk, a Prius driver felt compelled to yell slurs at me. I can only guess that the inconvenience of having to yield to a pedestrian was some kind of trigger.
Another observation was that very few pedestrians wear reflective gear. It almost seemed as if wearing dark clothes at night was intentional. I suspect that also has a negative effect on drivers as it can be extremely difficult to see pedestrians.
I think pedestrian and driver safety go “hand in hand”. In Norway, pedestrians are expected to wear reflective gear and drivers are required to yield. Based on my empirical evidence, it is significantly safer walking in Oslo, Norway than in Portland, OR.
I can only hope at this point that enough people come together to try and improve the safety in the states.
I've experienced this in the UK as well using a zebra crossing. A driver decided to accelerate at me and then slam on the brakes as late as possible, then lean out the window to swear and tell me to get out the way.
It definitely seems like extremely aggressive driving has become more common over the last few years. Not sure if it's just driving or the general attitude of people due to covid, inflation etc causing people to have shorter fuses.
[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-14/new-car-p...
Yeah, but if you yell at other drivers, they don't hear you so you can do it safely.
If you yell (possibly with open window) to pedestrian/biker they hear you and "take harm" (however small it is).
Another "priviledge" od being in car. Total isolation, including isolation from consequences of your own dick moves.
The very social situation of being canned box is reason for so much frustration of drivers. When you're on bike/feet you behave much better usually.
There is something about that act of driving and the environment of a drivers seat that breeds maladaptive emotional responses. I think it's partly being alone and disconnected from other road users that generates runaway sense of entitlement and cooking off emotionally without any regulating social factors.
I think that both driving and internet use have a common de-socialisation effect fuelling similar negative behaviours.
That sucks. I've had sorta-similar experiences, but I've probably provoked them...
If I have the right-of-way,e.g., stop sign AND I'm in the street when the automobile is 3/4 of the block away and they still try blowing through the intersection with me being in front of them...
I either grab as high [front of the vehicle] as I can if I'm getting run-over, or, if a near-miss, I park one of my heavy boots into the side of their car (not recommended, I tend to dent it but I get tossed to the ground by their velocity).
I live in Seattle, Belltown specifically, for 20 years, and spend much time in Pike Place Market [0]. I've worn a long black coat for the past 40 years; and this stuff only happens during daylight.
The people who "circle around" to confront are rare.
In those situations I behave calmly, explain what is going on, and most of the the time, we walk away.
Now to atone... I do not put up with this in my neighborhood. I am lucky that I call an Attorney. Instead of seeing another "blah foo blah person...getting harassed by a "bum" I find either a compassionate human who figures-it-out or a dick-w that wants to punch me out.
That's the same thing in France especially for winter clothes, and given that night are longer in winter that's makes it even worse!
You can see it in business attire.
It doesn’t help that many cities stopped routine traffic enforcement during the same period.
I'd recommend checking out the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel for some interesting observations on the differences between the U.S. and Europe when it comes to traffic safety. Also, Strong Towns is a resource you might want to check out: https://www.strongtowns.org/
Knowing the average engineer, traffic engineers probably care about a lot of things.
What usually happens is that someone higher up (politicians, city administrators, etc) set up an incentive system that forces the engineers' hand. Stuff like: "Increase car traffic speed in region X by Y% in 2023".
Don't mention to car-centric politicians the most effective speed for safe throughput is about 40kph/25mph and not 120/75.
I would assume that depends on the road in question? Eg Autobahn vs dirt road?
If not, that would be a very interesting result!
I was assuming an ideal road though with everyone sticking to the same speed. Cross lane movement and speed difference in traffic also places limits and slower speeds limit both of those afaik.
The basic reason is that free flowing traffic requires bigger gaps between vehicles. (safe anyway, but practically the way people drive generally follows the safe spacing function, but with a 'bit' of y offset). At the minimum latency (the free flow speed (ffs)) the spacing between cars is x seconds, so you get 3600/x cars per hour. At maximum flow rate, ~1/2 the ffs, the spacing is more like 1-2 seconds, so you get closer to 2k cars per hour. Even slower, the cars can be packed closer, but you don't clear the road nearly as quickly so the throughput is lower.
See https://courses.washington.edu/cee320ag/Lecture/Freeway_LOSd... (page 13) and https://courses.washington.edu/cee320ag/Lecture/Freeway_LOSd... (page 9)
It's a little bit like the tradeoff between latency and throughput in servers.
Take for example buying groceries in your corner shop daily on your way back from work. Easily 50% more expensive than taking a longer, less frequent trip to a larger supermarket further away.
But what upset me the most was showcasing a building built somewhere in Canada that was, in his view, great because it didn't have parking spaces.
What actually happened is that the building rented-out parking spots from a nearby multi-level parking lot and was only allowed to be built as an exception, because it was too tall according to the zoning. And it shows, because it stands out like a buck tooth.
I live in a country essentially taken over by construction companies' interests and this is the kind of bullshit they peddle to improve their margins.
As for buying for the corner shop being 50% more expensive, why? What are you basing yourself on to make that assertion?
I see this as a perspective of someone who never lived in a walkable city that has both zoning and parking minimums. It's not a case of either-or.
The type of construction he's proposing is a net negative to how a city functions - specifically it was a particularly tall building in an area where four floors + ground level buildings were already allowed - that's an already appropriate density for a city.
> What are you basing yourself on to make that assertion?
That's my experience from just about every European city I spent any appreciable time in(meaning - at least a few months) - especially the one I grew up in.
And no wonder - grocery stores scale exceedingly well so far as there's cheap land to build on. That's not the case in city centres.
Sure, I'd love to see how prices in small shop chain retailers compare to big box chain retailers. But sorry, your personal gut feeling is not data enough for me.
As for walkable cities with zoning and parking minimums, perhaps it can technically be done? But you do agree that it makes it extremely difficult and disincentivised, right?
I don't know about the building you're talking about and can't weigh in on this.
I had friends who, in order to save money, went by bus, did shopping for the whole week and just Ubered back, because even compared to a local Lidl it was worth it. Of course it was a major time sink, but spread over a week didn't affect them too much.
My personal record was in Zurich, where I had a whopping 3.6km to the next Lidl, from which I only returned by bus, because those ~4CHF saved on the ticket there afforded me 1kg of bananas(2CHF instead of 3 in Coop) and a can of tuna.
This is the type of reality I'm talking about - note the lack of cars in these scenarios.
I wish I could find the clip showing the mentioned building, but a cursory search didn't yield results.
By bicyle, 3.6 km would take 10-15 min without riding hard.
In absolute numbers, yes.
Percentage-wise? No.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
Norway ........... 852,238 ............. 15.72%
United States ... 50,632,836 ........ 15.28%
If it is difficult to see you, especially at night, it is dangerous for you and cars (obviously more for you as pedestrian) even if drivers are prudent. Help cars and help yourself by being visible.
Pedestrians wearing dark clothes at night are almost invisible. Until we put sidewalks and bright crosswalks on every street in the country, wearing reflective clothes is common sense. Comparing that to a helmet mandate is absurd.
No, someone who pops out to the shops should not have to think about putting on reflective gear, someone who goes out in a car a night should be the ** aware pedestrians exist and know to turn their lights on.
The idea that innovations demand normal folks to change their way of life is absurd on the face. Very simple measures, like major consequences for all vehicle-pedestrian collisions would solve this better.
There are already major consequences for hitting a pedestrian.
To be charged with vehicular assault or manslaughter you have to prove intent, most of these collisions are a result of mild negligence or even poor roadway design. Many states don't have any kind of charge for negligent collision that results in jail time. And yes if you kill or injure someone while driving distracted I think 3-6 months in jail is still pretty minor, given that consequences can be permanent.
For instance, in many cases, when a car has injured a cyclist severely, there could have been infrastructure to prevent this (e.g. separate bike lanes, clear road layouts, …). A helmet would not have prevented the accident.
Similarly, unless someone's crossing a dark street at night without looking for oncoming traffic, why should pedestrians have to be wearing reflective gear all the time, when there could be well-illuminated crosswalks, slower driving speeds, speed bumps etc.?
(I'm not claiming there aren't cyclists ignoring red lights or pedestrians randomly crossing roads in unsafe situations … that's usually the next argument.)
If it is dark and there's traffic it is safer and useful for everyone to be visible. Obviously this depends on how well the streets are lit, if they are very well lit it may not be a big issue.
As a pedestrian at night (which is pretty much any commute to/from work in winter in the UK) I know that sometimes cars don't see me or see me at the last moment if I wear dark clothes, or even any clothes that are not high-viz.
And as a driver I know that this is because pedestrians, or even cyclists at crossings, can be very difficult to see in low light conditions (good forbid there's fog as well!) even if you're driving carefully.
This is all common sense, really.
In my neighbourhood, which is residential and poorly lit as many are here in the UK, people also wear lights on themselves when they walk their dogs in the evening, and they usually also make the dogs wear lights.
When I go running in the evening I wear a high-viz jacket and one of those chest lights so that I can be seen and can see the potholes as well.
Again, common sense for safety in such conditions.
Even when I cycle (which implies speed much lower than for a car) I sometimes notice pedestrians in dark garments (without reflective elements) at a small distance and have to brake hard (moving light beam up would help to see them further but it would blind both pedestrians and other drivers).
I don’t see why we couldn’t require some reasonable action from pedestrians, too. I’m not suggesting pedestrians should become Christmas trees, but things like “don’t be dressed in Vantablack” seem reasonable to me.
Firstly, though, street designs should aim to have street lighting wherever car drivers and pedestrians are expected to interact.
The pedestrian now has an independent choice to wear clothing that helps make themself visible or clothing that makes them harder to see. Their own safety will be affected by their choice.
I wouldn’t pass a law requiring it, but I do choose light/visible clothes for myself and for my family when out at night.
For example:
When it is cold, we wear protective gear to keep us warm.
When the UV index is high, we wear protective gear to protect our skin.
When it is dark, we wear reflective elements to be seen.
Obviously not everyone subscribed to that thinking, and it is not my intention to shift blame.
Do not _artificially_ lower a speed limit (people will drive the speed that feels safe) nor _artificially_ make a roadway more dangerous (it will be more dangerous).
Or even better still, build a separated pedestrian way. Skybridges, underground shopping district tunnels, all sorts of engineering solutions exist for isolating pedestrian and vehicle traffic entirely which will maximize safety and in climates with adverse weather encourage year round walking.
Separate pedestrian ways mostly suck. Segragated infra in very bad weather is used, but in most conditions walking at ground level is preferred. In Germany, many Pedestrian Underpasses (often with shops), Overpasses, Skywalks were abandoned in favor of level-crossings, due to accessability concerns, pedestrian dislike, maintainance hassle and the general tendency of them to get unattractive very quickly.
In rural areas, segregated infra makes a ton of sense. Nobody wants to be near noisy, dangerous cars over 40mph. So they build separate bike and pedestrian paths in rural areas to connect the denser parts of the country without the need to get in a car in between.
Typical urban road... https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XuBdf9jYj7o/maxresdefault.jpg https://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/cyclelanes0...
Mixed on a slow neighborhood road (30kph is 18mph)... https://coordinates.ce.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/images...
Completely separate bike path... https://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/cyclelanes0...
That probably won't work long-term, see for example 55mph state highways that newcomers to the area tend to drive annoyingly slow on.
The right way to do it is what the Dutch do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxRYrpbnuA
It's called "traffic calming".
Oh, and underground pedestrian walkways, skybridges, etc are absolutely horrible long term solutions. If you'd use one of them for extended periods of time, you'd know. They're generally under maintained over the decades, they tend to get dirty and attract homeless people as shelter (I don't want to get into the debate of why homeless people need to use them as shelter), they're for various reason a top target for muggings, they inconvenience the people you should be encouraging (pedestrians) by greatly increasing the distances they have to walk, which means that people will just stop walking when their 500m straight line walk becomes a 1.2km runaround, etc.
It seems the best efforts in reducing pedestrian casualties have been in making the road more complicated to drivers.
A sister comment mentions making street narrower with more obstacles. I’ve also seen straight street transformed into multicurves ones. Fake pedestrian statues set at crossing points. Fake painting on the road that force the driver to focus etc.
And all of these (unfortunately for drivers?) seem to have had a positive effect in the towns that implemented them (at least while the driver doesn’t get used to them in the case of non obstructive setups).
Fake pedestrian statues and painting are the opposite and strogly discouraged, because they distract driver from real pedestrians and numb attention. These are just fantasies of police departments.
And it’s not 100% clear which is overall safer - the latter can result in drivers always looking but a moment inattentiveness can result in disaster. (The main advantage of slower speeds is the driver can react in time; a pedestrian hit even at 10 mph is not going to do well.)
I don't think this is so prevalent everywhere, among cyclists maybe, and maybe if you're planning on walking down some dark country roads with no pavement.
Honestly, this one struck me as maybe a step too far, walking around town should not really require protective gear
Portland person here. I drive, and I have some competence at it, no tickets in about 50 years of driving, but it is growing very difficult to drive safely. I am a retired guy who drives at whatever speed I consider safe according to conditions, and I try to follow the rules. But so many drivers are in such a rush, so many bicylists drive like stunt men, and the time pressures of modern life and road systems overloaded with cars probably damage safety seriously by raising everyone's stress and pulse rate.
The traffic engineers (or the bureaucrats) who control the traffic controls know that the fewer people who drive, the safer we all will be, but that relationship only holds when other factors are constant. We have road and traffic systems now that seem to be designed purely to discourage driving. Like everyone other than the driver (buses, trolleys, bicycles, roller-skaters, skateboarders, pedal-powered delivery trucks, ...) has the right-of-way and the driver is presumed wrong if any encounter, however illogical and incomprehensible, with the other modes of transportation should occur. Too many creative, novel, and unfathomable patterns of paint on the pavement that mostly are supposed to create safe zones for the other modes without any safety-preserving and unambiguous physical barriers; too many directions to look (like six at many intersections) from which people may be getting into a driver's path in less than a second. Did I mention that about zero percent of the municipal experts who come up with all this chaos are within 20 years of my demographic, so they have no idea of what percentage of the population has to have a very very good day as a driver to not raise anyone else's eyebrows or scare themselves to death.
This situation is just another obvious sign that the auto-centric economy is not benign. I rarely drive more than twice in a week, but those trips would cost around 20 percent of my Social Security and 20 percent of my time if I tried to do them without a personal vehicle. It seems like the most likely shot we have at de-fanging the horrible auto is that the huge number of drivers will clog the roads and foul the air so much that no one will want to drive any more, so we'll have to find a better way.
The difference you describe is more cultural. In Europe most people who are able to walk regularly. Cars are used for longer distances and perhaps a few super lazy people. But generally everyone knows what it's like to walk. Most people don't know what it's like to cycle, though. So people get angry at cyclists all the time. In the US people don't even walk. Walking is seen as a leisure pursuit, not as a way to get around. So basically pedestrians are treated the same way cyclists are here.
It essentially boils down to empathy. People who have only ever used a car can't relate to people outside of a car. They can't imagine what it's like being exposed to the elements or having to actually expend energy to move. You'll see people completely soak pedestrians or cyclists by driving through puddles. Or getting frustrated that cyclists aren't going above 20mph because they have no fossil fuel assistance.
I think if everyone was required to work their way up to having the responsibility of operating a car things would be much better. I think at least a year spent using a bicycle or other non-motorised vehicle should be required before being able to use a car. Pilots don't get straight into jumbo jets as soon as they've learnt to walk. Why do we let people get straight into cars?
The fuck they are.
Pedestrians, viz. anyone walking, is not expected to wear anything but clothes.
And yet, the in regards to pedestrian safety it _feels_ less safe for pedestrians here. The visibility is simply much lower in the winter, the roads are smaller, the lights dimmer, and the walkers more abundant. It's a very interesting difference from TX and a few other places I've been.
Our cars kill people because we do not test for pedestrians surviving impacts. The EU does, and their cars kill less pedestrians. (They do a bunch of other things too, like redesign roads with reducing pedestrian collisions as a goal, which we also do a poor job of tracking.)
We will not get the results we are looking for until we start actually looking for them.
It's worth noting that the trend has accelerated in the last three years but we are actually up over a much longer period of time. From 2009-2019 we erased the entire decline in pedestrian deaths from 1990: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17194.jpeg
That is an obvious difference with Europe. Both have much worse pedestrian safety, especially the truck.
The default vehicle for someone who needs to move tools, materials etc in Europe is not a truck but a van like a Ford Transit or Mercedes Sprinter.
The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk.
Changing either of these will take years.
I wouldn't be surprised if increasing numbers of SUVs and pickup trucks in the US is at least partly to blame for this. If you're hit by a sedan, you're likely to get thrown onto the hood, windshield, or roof of the car. If you're hit by an SUV or truck, you're much more likely to get dragged underneath, where you can get run over by the wheels. While neither situation is particularly fun, the latter is much more likely to result in death.
> The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk.
It would also be interesting to be able to classify what was happening when the pedestrian died in data like this. Were they crossing the street and a car going perpendicular ran into them? Were they crossing the street, and a car turning from the parallel street ran into them? Or were they walking along a road without a sidewalk, and a passing car hit them?
Agreed that the US has a lot of wide, multi-lane roads, and poor sidewalk coverage on many roads, but I don't expect that situation has changed (for worse or better) all that much in the past few years, in a way that would explain the surge of fatalities.
But anyway, to explain the increase in fatalities, my money would be on smartphones: more people driving distracted, and more pedestrians walking around buried in their phones, having no idea what's going on around them. Another posters somewhere here pointed out that pedestrian fatalities have been rising steadily since their all-time low back in 2009, which roughly coincides with the rise of smartphone adoption.
When you park an Escalade at a street corner, everyone who's trying to cross that intersection is screwed.
I really hope parking too close to an intersection was made illegal everywhere in the US like it is in some European countries.
Interestingly, New York state does actually have a "no parking 30 feet (9m) from a crosswalk" but New York City has overridden that to make it legal
see what running the equivalent of a red light does to you as a train operator or airplane pilot. in a car? who gives a crap lol! and let's not even touch upon maintenance...
Anyway, driving feels more dangerous the last couple years. Also, I wonder if cars haven't changed but the number of beast-mobiles gone up? I drive a car and most trucks these days look like they'd kill me instantly and they drive like they wouldn't mind.
I cannot remember the last time I saw a police officer pulling someone over, either around town or on the highway.
I was rear-ended by a guy who was clearly looking at his phone and the cop refused to write a ticket despite him rear-ending me at a stoplight that I had been waiting at for over half a minute.
Cops are a legal gang and we cannot have police reform fast enough, starting with federal minimum standards for fitness, education, training, and on-the-job apprenticing/mentoring. In huge swaths of the US, all you need to be a cop is to pass a background check, have a pulse, and be young enough.
I do feel the same way as you though. Running red lights, for example, has, at least in my experience, increased massively the past few years (UK)
I suspect there isn't just one cause, but I did see that several states have stopped requiring new drivers to take a road test. Teens who wouldn't have passed a drivers test, cell phones, higher than normal stress/anxiety/frustration, grief, and an increase in walkers may also have played a role .
https://news.yahoo.com/americas-cars-trucks-getting-bigger-1...
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/acura/integra-4-door-se...
It does not test what actually happens in the event that a collision cannot be avoided, and the car hits the person anyways.
It's also worth noting, the test only goes up to 37MPH, which is lower than common speed limits on arterial roads in suburban areas across the US. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/about-our-tests#front-crash-pre...
US population growth rate 2019-2022 was quite low due to the pandemic the actual increase was 18% or ~500 people from 2019. Further, working from home changed the dynamics around driving presumably a great number of people got worse because they didn’t do it as much. The numbers of pedestrians may have also increased faster than population growth rate.
I don’t mean to downplay deaths but looking at a few datapoints may not represent a trend. Economics, weather, etc vary from year to year.
It’s been 13 years, at which point do we call it a trend? Especially if you compare to peer nations which have not seen the upward trend: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest...
Also, look at that chart again, 2 years after 2009 were lower than the year before. I only bring it up because of how easy it is to see trends that aren’t there.
They are the most difficult to see (especially from a large vehicle, or amongst large parked vehicles) and the most vulnerable to collisions, since they'll be hit directly on the head.
Rates are much higher between 4 and 65 than for the very young and the elderly. So, the person you’re replying to is correct.
Some states in the US stopped requiring new drivers to take a road test before being handed a license due to the pandemic. I imagine that meant a lot more people were driving who shouldn't be on the road.
You can change the rules for newly built (or refurbished) infrastructure only.
Roads don't last forever, so if you change the rules now you'll have the pedestrian friendly infrastructure you want in 20 years, without need a big push.
That's how the Dutch got (and are still getting) their infrastructure to be more human friendly.
It's like that quote: "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."
The fact that EU has less traffic deaths is not because of testing, but because of the design of all the infrastructure and more importantly; culture. Yelling at pedestrians because they are walking a zebra crossing is something I cannot comprehend.
Fix the infra! Get actual good designed roads that have dedicated lanes for pedestrians and cyclers. Ban cars in city centers.
In Canada, I once had a visitor from Denmark who was aghast at the amount of horn honking on the roads. In Denmark the horn is to be used only in an emergency, such as the imminent threat of collision. Apparently you might get a ticket for misusing the horn (not sure about this, it was 30 years ago).
Here in The Netherlands, as a pedestrian or as a cyclist, I am regularly politely annoyed with drivers who stop for me even though they have right-of-way! This has something to do with infrastructure design, but also with the fact that most everybody is a cyclist, and of course that in any accident involving a motor vehicle and a bicycle, the motorist is by law _at least_ 50% liable.
Many countries have them either as part of the sound rules or separate rules (Since you live in NL, it's a separate offence a 95 euro). It used to be part of the rule standardization process but I'm not sure it still is. Somebody can correct me on that.
The reason the cars stop is good since it provides more time for both drivers to get a grip of the situation and at worse limits the speed of an impact. Though due to cyclist speed increasing due to more electric bikes there is a discrepancy on older (as in more than 5 year old) cycling crossings, not all are designed for 20+kph speeds and it's hard for drivers to notice oncoming fast traffic which is in a bend (looking at you local roundabout with a hexagonal cycling path making it impossible to see cyclists further away than the section you can see due to sharp angles and larger distances created by the hexagon).
We should also look at the overall design of these damn things.
Weight. Gigantic A-pillars (do we really need this many damn airbags?). Touch screens and horrible user interface design. Drive by wire removing all sense of physicality and risk (because you sure as hell don't want those new pickup truck drivers perceiving the true weight of their vehicles...).
If it meant that my A-pillars could be 50% narrower, I would happily forego the protection afforded to me by those side impact airbags. In fact, if you could promise to reduce my vehicle's weight by 1000 lbs, I would forego all forms of driver-oriented protection.
The tradeoffs we've made for the driver in the driver vs pedestrian game are extremely unfair in my estimation. I hate driving these "modern" vehicles.
Sounds like we are back to weight being the root evil here.
Why do the cars need to weigh so much again? Are we dealing with circular reasoning at this point?
The minimum weight for tires, suspension, exterior panels, frame, interior panels, seats etc isn’t that bad. But it gets worse the larger interior you want from simple scaling.
It’s mainly the airbags (and the angle of the windshield too I suspect) - and that it is simply not an aspect that is controlled for in testing to allow a vehicle to be road worthy. Add a tax based on degrees of width of A pillars and they would start shrinking.
Humans are not designed to drive at such speeds, we've been trying to correct this for decades, and still same problem, plus, we end up with horrible and empty cities. Time to switch to safer vehicles.
It's a very popular genre.
It amuses me that future humans are going to watch these videos in amazement at how medieval and barbaric driving of cars was!
Driving cars like we do is totally bonkers. Barreling down the freeways at ~100kmh with only friction brakes, our reactions and the fear of mutually assured destruction to stop of us crashing into each other.
It's absolute madness.
We have expended tremendous resources in making cars safer whilst never admitting that we cannot fix the real problem. Which is that humans are terrible at driving safely. We have dreadful reactions and a mass delusion that we are in full-control of the vehicle at speed!
It's astounding that we're completely apathetic to driving at high speeds in opposite directions with clearance of meters at best. You simply put your life in the hands of hundreds of random people you pass every trip, hoping that they (intentionally or due to any tiredness, distraction or medical emergency) don't swerve in the slightest to your side and kill both of you instantly.
The northern states weren't so bad in terms of safety; in Gloucester MA cars would stop to let you cross as soon as you were facing the street. In contrast, NJ was pretty bad; I had to wait for 2-3 minutes _at a crosswalk_ before I could cross because cars just wouldn't stop. At least the infrastructure was relatively good.
The worst was Florida, though. There's a shocking lack of just basic infrastructure, like sidewalks stopping randomly (what am I supposed to do, take flight?) or just outright absent with no shoulder either. One time I was walking on such a street (and this was a city street, not a highway or anything) and one of these very large pickup trucks almost hit me in the face with his side mirror because he wouldn't give me space... I made a "come on" gesture in protest, and the guy stopped in the middle of the street, got out of his truck, and started berating me! As if that wasn't enough, just a few minutes later, I got honked at because I apparently wasn't crossing the intersection fast enough... But I had my pedestrian crossing light on so technically I had the right of way.
There's also a disturbing lack of public transport in Florida, for example they have the "Space Coast Transportation Authority" which has a few bus routes, but none that go to the Kennedy Space Center. The car brain is unreal around these parts.
Grew up in NJ and just recently moved back. This checks out. It's pretty bad.
> At least the infrastructure was relatively good.
This is relative I suppose but we have a lot of stroads... I wouldn't say our infrastructure is good, though it depends on where in NJ I think.
I meant, at least there are sidewalks, designated crossings, and pedestrian lights at intersections. Can't really say the same for other states.
Furthermore, the curve is V-shaped, with the best year in 2009; it seems like some thing or things happened around 2010 that suddenly changed a long-term downward trend into a much more rapid upward trend. It's hard to see how a change in human behavior would cause such an abrupt turnaround or such a steady increase.
I think what fits the data best is that this is due to a technological change, and I suspect it might be tied to sales of hybrids and EVs, which are quieter vehicles that pedestrians are less likely to be aware of, and sales of which really ramped up starting in the late 2000s. Every year, we add more of these vehicles to the roads -- which is a very good thing overall -- and that would explain why the pedestrian death rate is steadily increasing.
In other words, it may be that this is not due to a change in human behavior, but rather that human behavior hasn't caught up to a technology change. In addition, it looks like NHTSA's "2015 Pedestrian and Bicyclist Data Analysis" suggests that pedestrian deaths for kids continued to decrease between 2010-2015, but that adults 50+ suffered the largest increases. In other words, the demographic that is both hardest of hearing and had the hardest time to adapt to hybrids/EVs was hit the hardest.
> some thing or things happened around 2010
My first suspicion is another weight bump to meet safety mandates. The heaviest car sold in 1992 was lighter than the lightest car sold in 2012. F = mv^2, v hasn't changed in most of those accidents.
I have several times found pedestrians walking right in front of me and I slam on my brakes and the pedestrians yell at me as if I'm a negligent driver, yet previously I don't think I did such a thing more often than once every few years, if that.
What I have come to discover is that the front frame rail of the 2017 is so huge it blocks my view exactly where pedestrians step off of a curb into traffic, especially because the pedestrian is elevated on the curb and completely behind the frame rail.
I recognize that drivers should of course carefully inspect every intersection, but reality is that they cannot, and what pedestrians really need to do with these newer vehicles making up a larger percentage of the vehicles is make sure they can see the eyes of the driver, else the driver likely cannot see the pedestrian, at all.
Still doesn’t mean we should ignore things like a pillars growing.
SUV/truck drivers kill 4x more of the pedestrians they hit.
When this applies to both drivers and pedestrians, the outcome is predictable.
We can argue about the statistics used by this article and the math here but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is US cities are not built for anything besides cars (with the exception of NY and maybe a few tiny downtown areas where hardly anyone lives). Urban planning on the US is a disaster and the decisions made 50 years ago amount to large, sprawling suburban areas we pretend are cities.
They were though, and it's a big shame that changed. I seem to recall Los Angeles had the largest streetcar system in the country.
In 1920 the population of LA County was about 900k. In 1950 it was 4 million. In 2020 its now 10 million.
For comparison, the population of Amsterdam went from 650k in 1920 to 835k in 1950 to 872k in 2020.
So suggesting our cities were designed for dense urban cores and it was the automobile that somehow destroyed it is revisionist IMO. Our cities experienced the vast majority of their growth when automobiles and fuel were relatively cheap, when most people weren't aware of greenhouse gasses or didn't necessarily care about the environmental impacts. So we built our cities reflecting what a lot of the population wanted at the time: automobile access.
Its not like LA was a city of 10 million people in a dense urban downtown with cable cars, then GM came in and spread them all out. The city with cable cars is absolutely nothing compared to the city which exists today.
However, comparing a place like Amsterdam, it hasn't experienced anywhere near the same level of growth during that time period. Most of what is the city today was the city in the 1930s as well, before automobiles were popular. And on top of that, automobiles were never as popular in Europe for several other factors other than just pure city design. Tons of dense European cities were dense cities well before automobiles were a thing. Pointing to Amsterdam, it only added 20k people in that time period, during which LA added >6,000k.
Meanwhile, most US cities have experienced these kinds of massive growth during periods when automobile access was relatively cheap and affordable for most households.
They have much longer frontal blind spots than sedans, vans, and SUVs, and their high bonnets mean that pedestrians are hit in the head and run over, rather than being hit in the legs (not great either, but a broken leg is better than a broken brain).
The ever-higher bonnets mean that these blind spots are growing, not shrinking, in never vehicles.
Furthermore, many such vehicles aren't even fitted with passenger-detecting automatic emergency braking.
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...
Ask your mama why she never taught you to look both ways before crossing.
Why does anyone have to walk on the sidewalk? Why do people need to cross at crosswalks? Just do whatever you want, there's no repercussions.
Is there some TikTok I missed?
The changes in safety regulations have pushed these big flat front ends as being “safer” for pedestrian accidents, which is why almost every vehicle these days has the same big flat front end. It really seems to me like it would have to have the opposite effect, pushing you under the vehicle and trampling you rather than relatively more safely throwing you over.
If you have something claiming they're safer I'd really be interested to see it. Can you link?
https://www.torquenews.com/1083/here-what-your-next-car-or-c...
P.S. What I wonder what "equitable enforcement" means
Rather than ticketing 10 cyclists rolling through a stop sign on an empty intersection, or a pedestrian crossing safely but against a red light, prioritise enforcement against those causing the most danger. Vehicles speeding in residential areas, parking in a school zone where it's forbidden, etc.
As an aside the article title is sensationalist to say the least - according to the article the US saw a 18% rise in pedestrian deaths in the same period.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2022-11-04/...
- State population density is too vague, what is the population density at the spot of the accident(s)?
- Age of pedestrians?
- Who was at fault, the driver or the ped?
- Did a mobile device factor into the cause of the accident?
- 2019 to 2022 feels like a small sample.
- I suspect there's another study somewhere, "More People Are Getting Their Exercise by Walking." That is, it's not about population and population density but opportunities. More walked miles creates more chances for an accident.
Always wondered if that still holds in the US after seeings those numbers and how dangerous roads can be if you're on a bike. Berlin wasn't all that bike friendly either, but at least you weren't the only one on a bike.
I don't have statistics but around where i am, based on the news, everyone forgot how to drive / drove more recklessly starting with the Covid lockdowns. But it's not the number of pedestrian deaths, it's deadly car accidents overall.
If you fill a pool with sharks then shark attack deaths will fall to 0 pretty quickly, after all! But it doesn't mean the pool is safe.
What a weird way to phrase a headline. From the article, it seems US population grew 2% and pedestrian deaths by 18%.
But why relate those two numbers? If the US population declined by 1%, that would not really affect the story at all, but the headline would turn into nonsense.
The population is stable, so it's not really important. But even if it is, you could just turn the pedestrian deaths into a per-100k number like a homicide rate.
"Increased 9x Faster" means 9*Population, or (rate_now/rate_prev)=9*Population? but Population itself is not even a rate.
This subreddit pokes fun at the phenomenon:
It’s a BS article. (Tongue-in-cheek) maybe it was written by ChatGPT.
Feels like agenda driven statistics.
So, no.