Pedestrian Deaths Are Up 45% in the Last Decade. When Is Enough Enough?

America is in the midst of an unrelenting crisis, and it’s happening on our roadways. The decade from 2010 through 2019 saw a staggering 45 percent increase in the number of people struck and killed by drivers while walking.

For years, our friends over at Smart Growth America have sought to draw attention to this ongoing carnage by publishing an annual report, Dangerous By Design, examining the trend and breaking it down according to geographic and demographic factors. The 2021 Dangerous by Design report just dropped, and it’s full of depressingly unchanged news:

• The four most recent years on record (2016-2019) are the most deadly years for pedestrian deaths since 1990. During this ten-year period, 53,435 people were hit and killed by drivers.

• In 2019, the 6,237 people killed is the equivalent of more than 17 people dying per day. 

• Older adults, people of color, and people walking in low-income communities are disproportionately represented among the fatalities.

• From 2010-2019, Black people were struck and killed by drivers at a 82 percent higher rate than White, non-Hispanic Americans. For American Indian and Alaska Native people, that disparity climbs to 221 percent.

The Numbers Speak For Themselves

Visit the Dangerous By Design website to read the report, and see a more detailed breakdown of the data by geography. (Where does your city rank?)

There is also a link to register for a live webcast on March 25th at 2 p.m. EDT, as experts from Smart Growth America and a few promised “special guests” dig into the report’s findings and talk about what change would look like.

Blame the SUVs and the Stroads

The dramatic rise in pedestrian deaths over the past ten years—which has not been mirrored by a rise in motorist deaths—speaks to multiple factors. One of the big ones is the growing share of the personal vehicle market represented by gigantic trucks and SUVs. These vehicles have larger blind spots, particularly in front, and higher grills which are liable to strike a person at chest height—where vital organs are easily damaged—rather than at leg height, where they’re more likely to survive the impact.

However, not even the deadly design of these vehicles, by itself, would make such an appalling death toll inevitable. The design of our streets is the real culprit that turns these incidents from rare tragedies to the all-too-common, numbing backdrop to everyday life.

Safe speeds, quite simply, mean slow speeds. If you’re struck by a vehicle at 20 miles per hour, you’re very likely to survive. If you’re struck at 40 miles per hour, you’re very likely not to. Most traffic fatalities, as a result, occur on stroads: wide urban street/road hybrids with multiple lanes, 35-50 mph speed limits, lots of access points and turning traffic…and people stuck in the middle of it all just trying to walk to get home, buy groceries, or catch a bus.

What Would it Look Like to Take This Seriously? (Hint: Don’t Ask FDOT.)

Here’s the list of the 20 most dangerous American metro areas for people walking, according to Smart Growth America’s Pedestrian Danger Index (explained in detail in the report):

The report ranks the 100 most populous metro areas by their “Pedestrian Danger Index,” which accounts for differences in population and walking rates. The top 20 most dangerous are:

1) Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL
2) Bakersfield, CA
3) Memphis, TN-MS-AR
4) Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL
5) Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL
6) North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL
7) Jackson, MS
8) Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
9) Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL
10) Jacksonville, FL

11) Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL
12) Albuquerque, NM
13) Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
14) Greenville-Anderson, SC
15) Stockton-Lodi, CA*
16) Baton Rouge, LA
17) Birmingham-Hoover, AL
18) Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX*
19) Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA*
20) El Paso, TX*

The asterisks denote metros that were not in the top 20 in the previous edition of this report. Notice two things:

1. How few non-repeat offenders are here. The most dangerous places have remained the most dangerous.

2. The outsized presence of the Sunbelt in general, but one state in particular.

Yes, we’re talking about Florida. Florida remains the deadliest state for people walking, with 7 out of the top 10 deadliest metro areas to its name.

You'd think the state Department of Transportation might treat that fact as an all-hands-on-deck emergency. You'd be wrong. The Florida Secretary of Transportation offered this staggeringly incoherent, hand-waving, buck-passing response, as quoted in the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

“The Dangerous by Design report considers select data points, which ultimately results in an inaccurate portrayal of the safety conditions across Florida’s transportation system. In addition, the report compares states and metropolitan areas across the nation, but does not take into account important geographic and demographic nuances, resulting in a one size fits all methodology for the assessment.”

…

“Safety is at the root of all we do, and I am proud that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently recognized Florida’s robust pedestrian and bicycle safety program as a national gold standard program," Thibault said. "Achieving our target of ZERO fatalities is a collaborative duty and, in conjunction with our safety partners, FDOT will continue to design and build a transportation system that meets the unique needs of all Floridians.”

Here’s an example of a conclusion that Dangerous by Design draws from “select data points”:

Florida had 5,893 pedestrian fatalities in the decade from 2010 to 2019. That's 11% of all such deaths in the United States during that time frame. Florida comprises 6.5% of the U.S. population.

Floridians deserve something better than spin from their Department of Transportation. It is actually true that there have been efforts at change within FDOT: the agency has a top-notch Complete Streets guide that allows for alternative design standards in urban areas that prioritize all street users’ safety rather than traffic speed. Cities are allowed to set a 25 mile per hour speed limit on urban main streets even within the state DOT’s jurisdiction.

However, FDOT does not consistently use its own manual in its own projects. And all accounts are that local and regional staff are routinely told they can disregard the standards in favor of more old-school designs that prioritize vehicle speed and throughput above all. Roads that are deadly by design are still the easy, no-friction default.

If FDOT wanted to show real leadership, it would do one crucial thing it has been unwilling to do. It would acknowledge that the real reason Florida is far and away the worst state for the rate of pedestrian deaths isn’t because of its demographics, or because of its weather, or because of population growth. It’s because Florida is full of literally thousands of places that look like this. This is a quintessential Florida stroad in Pine Hills, an area of suburban Orlando, that we profiled in a 2020 essay, “An Ordinary Intersection”:

Furthermore, Florida’s entire land-use pattern is based on the presence of stroads like this, which always kill people—it’s when, not if. We’ve separated residential subdivisions, schools, churches, office parks, shopping centers, all from each other so that the only way to travel between them is on a stroad like this. We’ve spread it all out and chopped it up into little pods, so that the best route from A to B is often long and circuitous.

Much of the developed portion of every U.S. state including yours is like this—Florida is the worst, but it’s merely the worst example of a ubiquitous pattern. We have cities that would cease to function if everyone had to drive 20 miles per hour. Our planning authorities are going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time: slow down our streets and provide real accommodation for people not in vehicles, while at the same time letting cities thicken up so that we no longer have to drive as often or as far.

This is a huge, generational challenge. It requires that we grapple with our whole development pattern, not just our DOTs and their road-design manuals. The least we can ask is for more of our leaders to show some political courage and acknowledge that.

Many thousands of lives depend on it.

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