Being a Pedestrian Is Risky Business

A lot of people who live in California worry about being shot dead by a stranger. But they should worry just as much about the probability of being hit and killed by a car while walking on the street.

Every year, about 900 California pedestrians are killed and more than 18,000 others sustain injuries, according to a new nationwide study on pedestrian deaths.

While pedestrian deaths account for 19% of all motor vehicle deaths in the state, just 0.7% of federal highway spending related to safety in the state was allocated to pedestrian projects.

The report, by a large coalition of environmental groups and organized under the Environmental Working Group and Surface Transportation Policy Project, demands a substantial reallocation of spending to improve pedestrian safety.

Nationwide, about 6,000 pedestrians are killed every year and 100,000 more are injured, which the report says amounts to a public health crisis.

Under the group’s formula, nationwide spending on pedestrian safety would go from its current $3 million to $14 million. This would allow for a program of installing sidewalks in suburban areas, enforcing jaywalking laws, erecting speed bumps and creating traffic circles to slow vehicles in intersections.

“We are not making the same commitment to pedestrian safety that we are making to auto safety,” said Brian Cohen, one of the report’s authors at the Environmental Working Group.

About a third of the pedestrian accidents in California occurs in the sprawl of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. And yet, Los Angeles is far from the nation’s most dangerous city for pedestrians.

The most dangerous was Fort Lauderdale, Fla., based on a formula that takes into account the number of deaths, the population and the percentage of people walking to work. It was followed by Miami, Atlanta, Tampa, Dallas and Houston--all Sunbelt cities characterized by suburban-type sprawl.

The safest cities are Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston, Rochester and New York, all older Northern cities with an infrastructure of sidewalks and large pedestrian populations.

Cohen said the efforts of Seattle show that investments in pedestrian safety can pay off. Over the last 15 years, Seattle has been able to substantially cut fatalities with a focused program and now ranks as the sixth safest city for pedestrians.

One myth of pedestrian deaths is that they mostly involve drunks who stagger in front of cars. The report shows that alcohol is involved in 1,000 of the deaths, a lower rate than in general motor vehicle crashes.

Cohen said the alcohol case is a way to argue against investing in pedestrian safety. More than half of all pedestrian deaths occur in neighborhood streets; slower speeds would help cut deaths. The risk of death is 5% at 20 mph, 45% at 30 mph and 85% at 45 mph.

Relatively little is known about how to make cars safer if they hit pedestrians or how to make streets safer for pedestrians, a federal official acknowledged.

The report is available from the Environmental Working Group at (202) 667-6982 or at the group’s Web site at https://www.ewg.org.

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