At the close of each year, one annual figure haunts urban planners in America: pedestrian deaths, which have risen sharply in the last decade. A shocking 7,508 pedestrians died in the U.S. in 2022, a 41-year high. This uniquely American trend among high-income countries has perplexed planners, researchers and journalists, including a recent data dive from The New York Times.
Many of the potential causes — the bloated size of modern automobiles, automatic transmissions leaving drivers distracted by touch screens and smartphones, and even long winter nights — seem impossible to reverse, certainly at the local level. But Americans are not without resources. There are multiple pedestrian safeguards that are easily implemented, low cost and backed with strong evidence that they save lives — if we choose to use them.
Nothing is more dangerous for a pedestrian than having their view of oncoming traffic blocked by a car, truck or SUV parked right next to the intersection.
Within cities, a large percentage of pedestrian accidents occur at intersections. Starting with the busiest commercial streets and working outward, “daylighting” intersections — removing curbside parking spaces adjacent to pedestrian crossings — can immediately improve visibility for all travelers. Nothing is more dangerous for a pedestrian than having their view of oncoming traffic blocked by a car, truck or SUV parked right next to the intersection. Too many of us have had to put one step forward and peer around the edge of a car parked right up against a crosswalk in order to see if the coast is clear.
For parents with strollers, older adults and those with limited mobility or impaired vision, these blind spots can be terrifying. Removing those parking spaces also dramatically improves crosswalk visibility for drivers, giving them more time to slow and yield. Daylighting can be accomplished via new signs and pavement markings, as well as by expanding sidewalks at intersections, a street-narrowing effect that also tends to slow cars as they approach.
As for the miles of road between intersections, pedestrian, cyclist and transit infrastructure can work hand in hand in the pursuit of safer streets, rather than against one another. Instead of making buses pull into and out of travel lanes and to the curb to pick up and drop-off passengers, cities can "float" bus stops out from the curb (sometimes called bus boarding islands). Floating stops not only simplify a bus’s path, but also shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians. Refuge islands, placed in the middle of crosswalks or road medians, can do the same.
Adding protected bike lanes along the curb of streets can also yield multiple benefits, reducing bike-pedestrian conflicts and improving sidewalk visibility along their entire length (including driveways), not only at intersections. Finally, when cities take the first step of daylighting intersections by removing car parking spaces, they can fill that freed-up land with street-level bike racks (or "corrals"). These provide much-needed bicycle parking, avoid crowding sidewalk space, and preserve the visibility increases of “daylight” intersections — partly by preventing drivers from simply ignoring new pavement markings, as can often be the case.
Beyond reducing the likelihood of pedestrian-car collisions, we can also make them less lethal when they do occur. The simplest way for cities to do that is to lower their default speed limits. That slower vehicle speeds save lives may seem obvious — traveling at lower speeds increases the amount of time a driver has to make the decision to brake, and decreases the distance a car travels once the brake has been engaged. But the relationship between vehicle speed and the survivability of a crash is starker than most people realize. At 23 mph, pedestrians have a 90% chance of surviving. At 32 mph, that number drops to 75%. And at 50 mph, just 25% of pedestrians live.
Too often, prevailing speed limits have prioritized driver throughput and convenience over and above pedestrian safety.
Too often, prevailing speed limits have prioritized driver throughput and convenience over and above pedestrian safety. Incrementally bringing speed limits back to appropriate levels for walkable, dense urban environments will not only reduce the number of crashes, but ensure that more people can walk away from those that happen. Cities like Boston, San Francisco and New York have begun this process, and others should follow their lead.
In recent years, Hoboken, New Jersey, implemented many of these ideas; since 2017, the city has not had a single pedestrian fatality, and traffic injuries have fallen 41%. Distracted driving, oversize vehicles and other external variables deserve genuine focus at the state and federal levels. But localities that take the layout of their streets seriously, and the rules of the road for the cars that drive on them, can appreciably reduce our national scourge of pedestrian deaths. All over the country, from Washington, D.C., to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Carmel, Indiana, to Baltimore, concerned residents, motivated City Councils and engaged planning departments are coming together for common-sense reforms to the public right of way. Each approach detailed here is low-tech, and prioritizes the most common form of transportation on earth: walking.