Mean Streets

Pedestrian Safety and Reform of the Nation's Transportation Law

By Brian Cohen, RIchard Wiles, April 1997

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year to make America's roads safer, yet this investment is failing to ensure the safety of all of us who engage in the most basic form of transportation -- walking. Millions of Americans walk -- to school, to work, to the store, or just around the block for a little bit of exercise. Our findings indicate that from 1986 to 1995, approximately 6,000 pedestrians were killed by automobiles each year, and more than 110,000 were injured. This carnage is attributable only in part to individual misjudgment -- a failure to "look both ways" as children are taught. These deaths and injuries are also the consequences of a transportation system gone badly wrong -- a system focused on making the streets safe for cars instead of making communities safe for people. Indeed, people are 1.6 times more likely to get killed by a car while walking than they are to be shot and killed by a stranger with a gun.

In Mean Streets, we analyzed the failures of this system, taking a close look at pedestrian fatalities, and spending on our streets, roads and highways -- the billions of dollars spent each year that frequently makes the roads less safe for pedestrians. Our analysis of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data found that:

Thousands of Pedestrians Are Killed Each Year by Automobiles

Between 1986 and 1995, approximately 6,000 pedestrians died every year in the United States after being hit by cars. This is a significant public health and safety problem -- the equivalent of a commercial airline crash with no survivors every two weeks. And for every pedestrian who is killed by an automobile, almost 20 more are injured -- more than 110,000 pedestrians are injured by automobiles each year.

Highway Safety Money Is Not Being Used To Protect Pedestrians

Pedestrians account for 14 percent of all motor vehicle-related deaths, yet only 1 percent of federal highway safety funds are spent on pedestrian safety. The remaining 99 percent is spent on automotive safety measures (such as road widening) that typically remove the obstacles to more rapid traffic flow. The Highway Capacity Manual -- one of the industry bibles -- provides the typical highway engineer's definition of a pedestrian: a traffic "flow interruption." Traffic safety features are designed primarily to allow drivers to move at higher speeds. This basic tenet of highway engineering often makes roads more dangerous for pedestrians.

Senior Citizens Are At The Highest Risk

Senior citizens (persons age 65 and over) comprise 13 percent of the population, but account for 23 percent of all pedestrian fatalities -- meaning that seniors are almost twice as likely to be killed by an automobile as members of the general public. As a group, senior citizens are particularly dependent on safe streets for walking because many of them no longer drive.

Most Fatalities Occur On Neighborhood Streets

More than half -- 55 percent -- of all pedestrian deaths by automobiles occur on neighborhood streets. The problem is not that pedestrians are walking in the wrong places, but that our local streets are becoming speedways -- designed to accommodate more cars passing through, not the people who live, walk, and play in their communities.

The Most Dangerous Cities For Walking

The high rate of pedestrian fatalities is a national problem. In some communities however, the problem is worse than most. In this report, for the first time, we present a list of the most dangerous communities in which to walk.

The cities with the largest numbers of walkers -- New York, for example, will have the most pedestrian fatalities. This does not always mean, however, that cities like New York are the most dangerous places to walk relative to the number of people walking.

The most dangerous metropolitan areas for walkers tend to be newer, sprawling, southern and western communities, where transportation systems are most biased toward the car at the expense of other transportation options. Among large metropolitan areas (those with populations of one million or more) the five most dangerous communities in which to walk are Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Miami, FL, Atlanta, GA, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL, and Dallas, TX. The safest walking communities are Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston, New York City, and Rochester, NY. In these metropolitan areas, walking activity is high, but there are relatively few fatalities. Our findings indicate that is eleven times more dangerous to walk in Ft. Lauderdale than it is to walk in Pittsburgh.