How American Cities Are Responding to the Safety Crisis of 20 Pedestrian Deaths per Day
Motor vehicles cause over 7,500 pedestrian deaths annually in the United States, about 20 per day. Low-income and communities of color face significantly higher risks. This first report in the series focuses on how Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston are responding to the crisis through data-driven identification of high-risk communities, community engagement, and street design.
On April 5, 2022, a speeding pickup truck struck and killed a 35-year-old man walking his dog in Houston, making him one of 117 pedestrians killed in the city that year. Eleven days later, in Brooklyn, a driver ran a red light and killed a 31-year-old woman on a crosswalk not far from her home. On a day this spring, a 72-year-old man in Los Angeles was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. According to an analysis released in June by the Governors Highway Safety Association, more than 7,500 people nationwide were killed by motor vehicles last year while walking to church, grocery stores, bus stops, or other destinations.
Pedestrian safety—or its absence—is tied to larger economic and social forces. "There is a perfect correlation between poverty and danger," said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America. The organization's report released last year found that people living in the lowest-income census tracts are 3.3 times more likely to die in road crashes than those in the highest-income areas. According to the 2022 report, low-income communities account for more than 30% of all pedestrian deaths. Black/African American pedestrians are twice as likely to be killed as white pedestrians.
Black and Latino pedestrians face higher risk of death
A study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health, which examined pedestrian safety in the U.S. between 2010 and 2019, found "a significant association between structural racism (as manifested through historical redlining) and contemporary community-level pedestrian fatality inequities in the United States."
The report said the pandemic exacerbated these inequities, noting that "low-income communities have significantly lower access to parks and other safe recreational walking opportunities and are less likely to have sidewalks, crosswalks, and street designs that support safer, slower vehicle speeds."
Smart Cities Dive's analysis of fatal pedestrian crash data shows that even in communities with lower overall pedestrian fatality rates, people of color and residents of low-income communities die at higher rates than other residents. This article is the first in a series focusing on three cities working to address these disparities while aiming to reduce overall pedestrian deaths. The second article explores regional differences in pedestrian fatality rates: recent data show that Sun Belt cities experience more pedestrian deaths than northern cities. The third focuses on federal and state-level barriers hindering city and regional leaders from reducing deaths, as well as some national and international efforts.
Atlanta: Focusing on "communities of concern"
According to data analyzed by Smart Cities Dive, pedestrian deaths in the city of Atlanta more than doubled in two years, from 14 in 2020 to 36 last year, ranking it 10th among large U.S. cities for pedestrian fatality rate. In this city of 500,000, Black and African American residents make up 48% of the population, according to the latest Census Bureau data, and the city's poverty rate is 18.5%, well above the national rate of 11.5%.
Betty Smoot-Madison, the city's deputy commissioner for strategy and planning, said many Atlanta neighborhoods lack sidewalk infrastructure, especially in communities with "high dependence" on walking, cycling, and public transit. Smoot-Madison previously served as director of mobility planning for the Atlanta Department of Transportation. She explained that the city uses data on race, income, age, single-parent households, and families with school-age children to identify "communities of concern" in its Vision Zero initiative. Vision Zero is an effort to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries among road users, based on the principle that humans make mistakes, so roads should be designed and managed with that in mind.
In 2020, the Atlanta Department of Transportation launched the Transportation Safety Leadership Academy, a program aimed at engaging and educating community members "on how government works and how they can become advocates within their communities by bringing in resources to improve road safety," Smoot-Madison said. The program includes a five-week training course, and participants receive a stipend. After attending the academy, residents of the Adams Park neighborhood—identified by the Atlanta Department of Transportation as a "community of concern"—won a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to install asphalt art installations to connect sidewalks and improve pedestrian safety near an elementary school, bus stops, and local shops.
Despite these efforts, Smoot-Madison acknowledged, "as a city, we have a lot of catching up to do, especially when it comes to pedestrian facilities."
She said some changes the city wants to make are not within its control because many of Atlanta's streets are owned by the state of Georgia. The Atlanta Department of Transportation is holding workshops with the Georgia Department of Transportation to review "state policies that have long existed and are typically oriented toward cars and their movement."
Chicago: Community engagement and education
In 2022, Chicago was the third safest pedestrian city in the U.S. on a per capita basis: according to the city of Chicago and Smart Cities Dive analysis, 46 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes last year, down from a spike of 60 in 2021. But that number masks a more complex story behind pedestrian risk. Romina Castillo, director of outreach and engagement for the Chicago Department of Transportation, described Chicago as "a very segregated city." She said the neighborhoods with the highest pedestrian fatality rates are mostly in the city's West, Southwest, and South Sides. Compared to the North and East Sides, these areas have higher poverty levels and more Black and Hispanic residents.
Since 2001, the Chicago Department of Transportation has engaged with schoolchildren and seniors through its Ambassador Program for pedestrian and bicycle safety education. The city has also committed to a Vision Zero plan and developed a Vision Zero action plan in 2017. "The key is building strong relationships with community leaders and everyday residents to best understand their transportation priorities," said Michael Kent, Vision Zero coordinator for the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Kent said lowering speed limits and adding curb extensions to slow right turns at intersections have been effective in slowing traffic, but he also has a broader perspective on road safety. "Having safe streets is directly tied to so many other issues," he said, including land use, economics, social issues, "and ultimately the 100 other factors that affect how people behave on the road."
Boston: Safest for pedestrians, but disparities remain
For pedestrians, the safest large city in the U.S. is Boston. This city of nearly 700,000 has a long history. First settled by Europeans around 1630, many of Boston's streets remain winding and narrow, limiting vehicle speeds and enhancing walkability. It is also one of the most traffic-congested cities in the world, according to Inrix.
According to Smart Cities Dive analysis, five pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in Boston in 2022. From 2012 to 2022, Boston recorded 63 pedestrian deaths—fewer than Memphis, Tennessee, recorded in just the past year. Brendan Kearney, co-executive director of WalkMassachusetts, explained that many of Boston's streets "are not wide, straight, or fast." He said because many people in the city walk, cycle, and use public transit, drivers are accustomed to being aware of other road users.
As early as 2001, Boston issued pedestrian safety guidelines for residential streets, a document that said it followed "a long history of implementing strategies to improve pedestrian safety." The city provides an online dashboard showing crashes and fatalities involving pedestrians and cyclists, updated monthly.
But Boston also has a long history of race-based restrictive real estate covenants and redlining, followed by "white flight" to expanding suburbs. According to an analysis of 2020 Census data by the University of California, Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute, the city ranks 20th in racial segregation among U.S. cities with populations over 200,000.
Last year, 71% of pedestrian deaths in Boston occurred in environmental justice communities, which the state defines based on median household income, proportion of minority residents, and the proportion of households that speak English "less than very well."
In a 2021 Streetsblog analysis of 210 motor vehicle crashes in Massachusetts between 2018 and 2020 that killed pedestrians or cyclists, 25% occurred in communities with above-average Black/African American populations. "It's those areas that have experienced disinvestment and were historically redlined," Kearney said, that have the highest pedestrian deaths. "So, what's next? How do we focus on these issues, address them, and invest in past injustices?"