Pedestrian Fatalities: On the decrease & Where

What do New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and Houston have in common? More pedestrian deaths than all other cities in the United States.

Pedestrian deaths are on the decline. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration commissioned a ten year study to examine the trends in crashes resulting in pedestrian deaths.

Twelve percent of all vehicle crash deaths are pedestrians. This means they are not occupants of a vehicle, motorcycle riders or bicycle riders: they are on foot.

The study, authored by Dow Chang, Ph.D. and P.E., revealed trends in those killed and the conditions under which they were killed.

• Men are more likely to be killed as pedestrians than women.
• January 1 and October 31 were the deadliest days of the year.
• People over the age of 64 are more likely to be killed as pedestrians.
• Blood alcohol content (BAC) increase the probability of dying as a pedestrian.
• 58% of pedestrian deaths are not in a crosswalk.
• Most pedestrian fatality crashes occur between 6 and 9 p.m., on Friday or Saturday, under sleet conditions and/or in the dark.

A look at the numbers
Between 1997 and 2007, the number of pedestrian deaths decreased from 5,321 to 4,784, representing a decrease of nearly 10%. Pedestrians are the only group of people whose fatality statistics have declined. They represent 12% of all fatalities in vehicle crashes.

While this sounds like good news, the chances of being killed has increased. In 1997, the chances a pedestrian would be killed in a crash was 5.3%. By 2006, that chance increased to 7.1%.

What did not change over the decade was the number of pedestrians killed in single vehicle crashes. Ten times more pedestrians are killed each year by single vehicles than those killed by multiple car crashes.

Where does it happen?
You already read about the top five cities, but there is more. Cities do account for 67% of the fatalities, but 87% of the cities in the United States do not report any fatalities. More than 90% of the cities which did have fatalities had nine or fewer. Less than 1% of cities had over 100 pedestrian fatalities.

Pedestrians are not being killed on the Interstate highway system, which forbids pedestrian travel. Nor are they on interstate highway roads (10%) or expressways (only 4%), instead 51% of pedestrians are killed on major traffic arteries around and inside cities. Local roads and streets accounted for another 30%.

The top five states are New Mexico, Florida and Arizona, with Washington D.C. and Nevada tied. Per capita, these states average more than 2.5 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 population.

Tomorrow we will look into when these crashes happen, to whom and why.


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