Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2022 Preliminary Data
ghsa.org
ghsa.org
At least twice a week, while crossing an intersection someone will turn at least 30% of the way through the intersection (if not more) before realizing that I'm crossing the street (in a crosswalk, with a green signal) then slam on the brakes.
This is after I _already started crossing_. I don't think any amount of diligence would protect me from this, other than simply not walking.
Around here (MA), we’ve given pedestrians about a 4 second head start to make them more visible in situations like this (less likely to be in the A-pillar airbag blockage).
My partner and I had a day long layover in Dallas and trying to get anywhere in that city on foot felt futile even after we taxi'd into the middle of what I assume is downtown.
Edit: Excessive distances are also a necessary condition for living in an environment with detached 2.5k+ sq ft single family houses with garages and backyards.
If it comes down to a choice between the dense, walkable cities of Europe and Asia, or the car-dominated suburban hellscape that is most of America, the vast majority of Americans are going to choose the latter.
IMO, if you really want to live in a walkable city, the thing to do is simply move to one, rather than sitting around hoping the rest of Americans are going to change their opinions and their culture. This is most likely going to mean leaving America. It's exactly what I did, and walkability was one of the big reasons.
But I do want to mention you can have a huge house with a backyard and garage. In fact the suburbs can be retrofitted to be more walkable - you just need businesses and such there.
It’ll take a while but you can see the fragility of the car-only infrastructure coming to bear. Eventually it’ll just cost so much money to drive everywhere you’ll be begging to walk.
A systemic problem needs a systemic solution. Not just a focus on livable spaces, but a serious __political__ reform and an approach that has the big picture in mind.
The American Dream cannot survive when it's foundation has become a land-lord rent-seeking, do no actual work, income source that is predicated on renting the basic needs of life to those less well off.
Historians might well compare at least the roots of some of the protests in recent years not just to civil rights and persecution about race (which is an easy thing to point to as a root cause) but also about classist divides between the wealthy rent-seekers, and those who are forced to rent.
They wouldn't be expensive if the demand wasn't so high.
My understanding is that there are actually a fair amount of planners and engineers who like walkability, but that they fairly often get overriden by politicians. Local politician elections have fairly thin margins, and the most motivated voters and the most motivated NIMBYs tends to overlap.
(Like, 5 people. This is not a study).
If you make eye contact with its driver, then maybe they've seen you. Otherwise, they can't see you.
Despite all of this, I still regularly run into drivers who clearly don't see me. I'm lit up like a Christmas tree! The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of drivers aren't paying attention. I think all the visibility changes I've made probably make a difference, but there's little I can do to for those who won't see me no matter what I do.
Acting like other drivers can't see you leads to particularly conservative cycling. I do often wait for a road to be clear if I'm going through a dangerous stretch of road, but this adds a significant amount of time to my commute.
The only thing I've found that works decently for drivers who clearly aren't paying attention is noise. I used to have an air horn, which I should start using again. I've been shouting as needed lately, which works but probably isn't good for my throat.
Even before I had a car with bluetooth capabilities, if I _needed_ to make a call on the road (which is already a very high bar), I would use the voice assistant to place a call on speaker phone and talk loud enough that it could catch my voice from the cupholder.
Back in Los Angeles, I was most surprised by the resistance I received from the local city council when I asked for additional protections for pedestrians at obviously-problematic intersections. There was one crossing on my route where the cross-traffic speed limit was 40 MPH, meaning the real-world speed was 45 to 50 MPH, sometimes lower depending on traffic congestion. Only the intersecting street I was followjng had a stop, and as a result, the 45 MPH opposing traffic also had essentially zero expectation of having to stop for a pedestrian.
I asked the city to consider modifying the intersection into an all-way stop.
They promptly rejected the idea and instead simply painted thicker lines on the crosswalk. Thicker lines. That was what the city thought would save me and other pedestrians from cars traveling ~45 MPH on a street where no one ever expects a pedestrian to be crossing. Needless to say, I avoided crossing there for all the years I walked to work, even though doing so made my route less convenient. They claimed it had something to do with nearby train tracks, but that argument did not hold any water.
So it comes as no surprise that California has high pedestrian traffic fatalities.
[That being said the rapid increase of pedestrian traffic fatalities depresses me greatly. Children are less safe to play on sidewalks and neighborhood suburb streets than they were just a decade ago. This isn't how safety is supposed to work.]
https://www.currentresults.com/Images/Maps/usa-state-tempera...
* They're comparing against 2019, which is good: too many similar things compare to 2020 which was a very unusual year.
* Pedestrian fatalities are up 18% comparing the first half of 2022 with the first half of 2019
* It's not that people are driving more: it's a 22% increase on a per-mile basis.
* Looking at figure 4, there's no obvious pattern in which states are seeing the largest increases (or decreases)
It isn't possible. Therefore if we are to drive the road environment needs to support it, which means keeping pedestrians away, or speed limits of 10mph when we must mix. To give us enough space Des Moines needs to expand to 20 lane freeways (that is Houston levels of roads in a city 1/3 the population).
You can't blame drivers and get anything done as humans are not capable of getting better.
Sure, if someone is grossly negligent like driving drunk, then we can blame the individual, but usually the best way to improve safety is to look at the whole sequence that led up to the incident, and that requires cooperation from all parties rather than arse-covering.
Why is it with rail and plane accidents that we investigate every safety incident, no matter how minor, no matter if there are no injuries or property damage? Yet with car travel, often we won't even look into a road design (or car design) unless there have been multiple fatalities in a short space of time. We just assign some blame, fine or incarcerate someone, and don't bother investigating it any further.
This seems like such an obviously wrong way to improve road safety.
Like weather, judging from how there is a pretty clear north-south gradient.
The south urbanized and suburbanized later due to the invention and adoption of air conditioning, which was around the same timeframe as our movement towards cars.
The two states have similar density (FL 406/mi^2, NY 412/mi^2), but what is probably more relevant is the average "experienced density". What I mean by "experienced density" is the average over all residents of the densities of their cities.
New York City has a density of 27500/mi^2, and 42% of New York residents are in NYC, so even if we play it safe and assume everyone outside of NYC lives in a place with 0 density, the average experienced density in New York would be 11550/mi^2.
Florida only has one city approaching NYC density, Sweetwater (25600/mi^2), and that only has 20500 people. The next four densest range from 12800-11860/mi^2, and have populations of 38700, 1000, 21500, and 53410. Its most populous city, Jacksonville at 838000 has a density of only 960/mi^2.
Taking all 919 Florida cities that have density data at usa.com [1] I get an average experienced density for their residents of 3096/mi^2. Those cities account for about 68% of the population. If we make the very generous assumption that the remaining 32% live somewhere as dense as the second densest Florida city, we'd get an average experienced density of 6200/mi^2 for the state, just over half that of New York.
If we make the more realistic assumption that the remaining 32% live in places with densities around the state average of 406/mi^2, we get an average experienced density in Florida of 2240/mi^2, less than 20% that of New York.
[1] http://www.usa.com/rank/florida-state--population-density--c...
https://gps.unm.edu/sites/default/files/traffic/NM_Pedestria...
New Mexico’s pedestrian fatalities have actually stayed fairly constant or even gone down a bit the last few years, during a period when the country as a whole has had a significant increase. And we’re still #2 nationwide! That’s how bad things are here.
Yes the DUI thing is another known problem here. Good to point it out. Don’t know that anything could be done about it. People just don’t seem to value life enough.
I once lived in one of the most obese cities in the country. When this made the news on reddit, commenters looked at the google street view and noted that there was no one walking.
https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/title49/t...
On a bicycle you don’t have to come to a complete stop at a stop sign or red light — basically treat them like a yield. A similar law was passed in Oregon a few years ago.
A generally progressive policy like that might show more respect for pedestrians than other states?