Top 10 metropolitan areas where long-term fatality trend decreased.
IN ORLANDO, FLORIDA, police launched “Operation Best Foot Forward,” a “crackdown” on drivers who don’t stop for pedestrians. In Denver, Colorado, there’s a focus on more crosswalks and improved bike lanes. Within the Medical District in Memphis, Tennessee, Crosswalk Zebras have been deployed in a city notoriously dangerous for pedestrians. Boston, Massachussetts aims to build 2,000 speed humps in the next few years.
Cities, states, and agencies at various levels have been deploying initiatives to combat rising pedestrian injuries and fatalities, whether focused on infrastructure, education or enforcement. Despite the increased adoption of Vision Zero and Complete Streets policies around the country over the past decade, pedestrian traffic deaths remain at levels not seen in nearly a half-century. A report by The New York Times last year indicated that traffic enforcement “dwindled” across U.S. cities during the pandemic and never returned.
On average, 21 pedestrians per day and 145 pedestrians a week are killed in traffic crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Overall, 7,522 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2022, the latest year for which complete statistics are available. That's the highest number since 1981 -- 41 years -- when 7,837 pedestrians died in traffic crashes; even higher than the 7,470 killed in 2021, which was one of the worst yeras for traffic deaths in recent decades.
“The places that are seeing success from Vision Zero commitments are those that are following through with implementation, including prioritizing funding and construction of projects that support people walking, biking, and taking transit,” said Heidi Simon, Director of Thriving Communities for Smart Growth America, a Washington, D.C.-based urban planning advocacy organization. “Unfortunately, far too many places offer a Vision Zero proclamation without any change to the processes, policies, or projects that have led to the increase in roadway fatalities in the first place.”
Smart Growth America's annual report, Dangerous By Design, breaks down NHTSA data by Census-designated metropolitan areas and states. Only 18 of 101 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) and just two states saw a decline in the number of pedestrians killed in the past five years (2018-2022), compared with the number killed in the previous five years (2013-2017).
The report ranks states by the number of deaths per 100,000 people. Most of the top 20 deadliest states for pedestrians cut a swath across the American South stretching coast to coast from North Carolina to Arizona, reaching as far north as Oregon on the West Coast and the trio of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland on the East Coast.
Cities in the Northeast have something of an advantage because they were built before the proliferation of cars. “They have a good foundation and framework to work from,” Simon said. Areas of the South that were designed and developed after the car was introduced prioritize cars over people, she added. They have wide arterials where cars can go fast without having to stop frequently, take into consideration other road users, or the environment.
The experience in Delaware illustrated the challenges states face. Delaware had the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the nation in 2016 at 3.38 per 100,000, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Preliminary data for 2023 ranked Delaware 10th among states with a fatality rate of 2.71. Almost two-thirds of pedestrian crashes in Delaware occur on arterial roads yet they comprise less than 10 percent of the roads. Delaware has focused its Pedestrian Action Plan on where there are clusters of pedestrian fatalities, like Route 40, an arterial road that has lots of commercial strips and residential areas with people crossing mid-block. Since 2009, there have been 22 pedestrian fatalities along Route 40, including some years with multiple fatalities, according to Maria Andaya, a transportation planner in the Delaware Office of Highway Safety (OHS).
This Time, It’s Personal
Last fall, Delaware launched “Drive Safe Delaware. Love Your Neighbor,” a campaign across the state featuring yard signs, post cards and other materials aimed at reaching drivers individually and personally.
The campaign is the result of a series of town halls held in each of Delaware’s three counties in 2023, where residents shared their road safety concerns. OHS combined that feedback with concerns from first responders and police chiefs and looked at targeted ZIP codes where pedestrian crashes occur. Pedestrian-focused messages then were developed for the priority areas with speeding and driving sober messages for “more of a localized reach,” said Meghan Niddrie, community relations officer for the Department of Safety and Homeland Security in OHS. Education extends to pedestrians as well as motorists. During the summer, Niddrie said they visit the state’s beach region to talk to pedestrians and teach them to use Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFB).
In 2023, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) established the Safety First Initiative, which draws on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe System Approach. There are seven principles of the Safe System Approach:
- Death and serious injuries are unacceptable
- Humans make mistakes
- Humans are vulnerable
- Responsibility is shared
- Safety is proactive
- Redundancy is crucial
Last summer, the department held its first event, the Safer Together-Summer Safety Event, featuring children’s activities, educational booths and demonstrations to give attendees a first-hand look at WisDOT’s safety initiatives in all modes of transportation. Demonstrations included work zone safety equipment, crash scene reconstruction tools, and bridge inspection technologies while educational booths highlighted rail safety messaging, pedestrian, bicycle and motorcycle safety, traffic management technologies, and impaired driving detection.
“It’s important to engage the public, educating them about partnerships we’ve developed,” Lea Collins-Worachek, WisDOT’s Division of Budget and Strategic Initiatives Administrator, said. It’s named Safer Together because they wanted to engage the public, sending a message that “safety is a shared responsibility.”
While last summer’s event was focused on Dane County, in the future it will expand around the state, Collins-Worachek said, targeting areas with higher incidents of crashes, serious injuries, and fatalities.
Unsafe behavior includes drivers speeding or not yielding or pedestrians ignoring crosswalks and not using pedestrian push buttons. “That’s definitely the frustrating part of being so education focused. We can tell people all day and can do the upgrades to infrastructure but it’s a matter of whether people will follow what they’re supposed to do,” Niddrie said.
Infrastructure
How roads are designed is a big part of SGA’s advocacy efforts because signage and campaigns alone don’t always change behavior.
“The design of our roads needs to be done in a way that does not allow for the reckless behavior to take place as easily as it is. That being said there will always be those who are going to drive recklessly, regardless of what the design of the street looks like,” Simon said. “When [drivers] get into a corridor with a lot of activity and cues, whether it be a lot of crosswalks, lighting, trees – you sit up, you pay a little closer attention.”
Last year, Jersey City, New Jersey identified locations where traffic calming could be implemented to help meet a goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2026. Funded through the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority’s (NJTPA) Subregional Studies Program, the Jersey City Traffic Calming Toolkit study explored measures such as curb extensions, bike lanes, speed humps and raised intersections that can slow down traffic, discourage dangerous or aggressive driving and improve safety for all travelers.
Concept designs were developed for 12 high-priority locations within the state’s second-largest city. More than 2,000 responses to a survey identified top concerns as streets that are challenging to cross, aggressive driving, unsafe vehicle speeds, and stressful biking.
Calming traffic can result in eliminating parking, which is the most common complaint, and the city tries to minimize the impact where possible, Elias Guseman, Senior Transportation Planner for the city, said during a presentation last year at a joint meeting of the NJTPA’s Project Prioritization and Planning and Economic Development Committees.
Demonstration projects used paint and plastic delineators to temporarily remove parking, install curb extensions and realign a bike lane to show the public what potential improvements could look like, gather input, and answer questions.
Temporary, quick-build efforts can be kind of a testing or invitation period before permanent installation, Simon said. It’s also an opportunity to conduct parking audits to determine whether an area is using all the parking that’s thought to be needed.
Jersey City’s neighbor to the north, Hoboken, New Jersey, is about a fifth of its size but has received attention for traffic-calming efforts. It’s going on eight years without a traffic-related death. Recent efforts to calm traffic include increasing visibility at intersections by improving sightlines, which sometimes can mean removing parking or installing rain gardens, and setting a city-wide speed limit of 20 MPH.
Leadership
“That’s come as a result of really doing things differently year over year over year," Simon said, attributing Hoboken’s success to the leadership of the city. Similar efforts in Madison, Wisconsin, and South Bend, Indiana, are echoing that, she said. “There’s a whole host of mayors and local elected officials who we work with,” through the Convening Local Champions Institute. It brings together local elected officials on the topic of Complete Streets and addressing traffic safety and accessibility.
To Simon, there’s a common theme running through these towns: “They recognize it’s not going to be a single project or a single policy that gets this done but it’s really a change in approach and a change in the way that we think about transportation in every aspect of the city, in every agency that touches our streets and public spaces.
In case studies, Smart Growth America identified several cities with accomplishments, such as Detroit and Buffalo. "They’re making intentional choices, in what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
SGA credits Detroit’s 40-percent decrease in pedestrian fatalities – from 142 deaths in 2018 to 84 in 2022 – to the city’s Streets for People Plan, published in September 2022. Traffic calming in residential areas was led by a program that has installed more than 10,000 speed humps on 320 streets since it began as a pilot program in 2018. That led to a 36-percent decline in crashes on those streets.
Detroit is also building a bike network, including the Joe Louis Greenway, a 27.5-mile biking and walking trail from the Detroit Riverfront to surrounding suburbs, with connectors to other trails and greenways.
One of the best ways to reduce traffic fatalities overall, not just for people walking, is getting people out of cars and shifting their mode of travel, whether that’s walking, biking, or other ways, Simon said. “That will improve safety for all modes,” she said.
Detroit’s Streetscape Program redesigns corridors to reduce driving lanes and provide more space like wide sidewalks and benches, for walking, biking and transit. For example, Barley Street is a curbless shared street that functions as a plaza for community events.
Buffalo, New York has reduced pedestrian deaths by half since 2018, from 20 to 10. “A number of historical, geographical, and design factors have created dangerous conditions for anyone trying to move around the city without a car,” according to SGA. Some credit goes to the city’s Slow Streets program, which also added speed humps – designed to accommodate snow plows – to slow vehicles in certain neighborhoods.
“Every community is different, however, the way we design our streets really needs to be at the heart of what we do to address the pedestrian safety crisis Simon said. The design tells walkers and bikers where and how they can travel safely and communicates to drivers acceptable speed and travel behavior.
Mark Hrywna is editor of InTransition magazine.