New Report: America’s Epidemic of Traffic Deaths Is Getting Worse

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented change in how Americans get around. But one transportation trend continues unabated, and in fact accelerated: America’s appalling epidemic of roadway deaths.

Every year, Smart Growth America publishes Dangerous by Design, a report that makes clear the grisly contours of this epidemic. This year’s report is here: you can get Dangerous by Design 2022 at this link.

(Click here to view the full report.)

The trends aren’t new, but the report’s conclusions are more forceful than ever. In short: We know why people are dying on our streets. It’s not because of individual recklessness, and it’s not an inevitable-if-tragic side effect of cars or driving. It’s a choice. A design choice. A matter of public policy priorities.

We also know how to solve the problem. We have all the design tools we need to make all our urban streets into both safer and more productive places. All that’s left is to call upon those with the power to halt this public health crisis to finally treat that task with the urgency it deserves.

Here is a short list of key findings of Dangerous by Design:

This is an ongoing, and intensifying, public health crisis. Since 2009, the number of people walking who are killed annually has increased by a horrifying 62%. From the report, “According to early estimates from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) released in May 2022, 7,485 people walking were struck and killed in 2021, which would be the highest number in 40 years.” As the report documents, especially at risk are those who live in places with more dangerous streets and less political will to fix them. This includes low-income people and people of color. Older Americans, who are more physically vulnerable, are also disproportionately likely to be killed on our streets.

The pandemic did not make things better, and may have made things worse. As we’ve written about at Strong Towns, the pandemic exposed an apparent paradox, and with it an important lesson. Although driving went down when COVID hit, road deaths continued to go up. The simple reason: many roadways became less congested, especially at rush hour. As Dangerous by Design puts it, “Congestion, something transportation agencies spend billions to eliminate, seems to have been slowing traffic and reducing deadly crashes… Seeing driving go down while deaths went up should call into question the long-held belief that traffic fatalities are inextricably linked to the amount of driving.”

The causes of this crisis are well known, and so are the solutions. Just look at where traffic fatalities are happening. A guest feature in Dangerous by Design by Alex Engel of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) has the data. In urban areas, arterials—or what we Strong Towns advocates would typically call stroads—make up 15% of all roads but are where a whopping 67% of pedestrian deaths occur.

We know stroads kill. We also know why. Dangerous by Design provides a compelling, non-technical, visual breakdown of a typical stroad intersection, highlighting the exact design features that induce fast-moving traffic combined with a high potential for crashes and conflicts.

A root cause of the crisis is the ways in which the traffic engineering profession imposes its values on our streets. This year, the Strong Towns message gets prominent billing in Dangerous by Design via an included guest essay by Charles Marohn with a simple message: “Traffic engineers do not share your values.” When the public is asked what they want out of city streets, they overwhelmingly rank safety the top priority. Despite this, our transportation planning and funding systems continue to prioritize different values: vehicle speed and throughput. We route billions of dollars into so-called “improvements” that widen rights-of-way, speed up traffic, and rob us of not only safe places, but also lively, productive ones.

A typical stroad in Raleigh, NC. Read how it was transformed into a safer street here! (Source: CNU.)

Cities have more room than ever to implement and codify a different set of priorities. We need comprehensive systems change to reverse the carnage on our roadways, and it needs to start at the bottom. Cities need to adopt their own requirements for safe street design, document successes and create replicable models, and not just allow but demand flexibility from standard, speed-centric approaches.

This is more attainable than ever, because of one notable change in the 2021 federal infrastructure law. As the report observes, “Cities are now free to depart from speed-focused design guidelines and use safer street design guidelines from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) when using federal money, even when states prohibit it through their own design regulations. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) also provides newer guidance on street designs for bicyclists and pedestrians, which can be used by cities or states.”

We must identify our urgent priorities using bottom-up insight. One thing highlighted by this year’s Dangerous by Design report is how inadequate our knowledge is of where people walk. Most large-scale data collection focuses on commute trips. During the pandemic, overall walking went up, but commute patterns changed drastically, which means big changes in who is walking and where they’re walking. And death rates have risen most dramatically in the cities that were already the most unsafe for walkers—but where walking rates have risen significantly.

This carries a key implication for local officials: you need to get out there and see where your community members are struggling to navigate safely. They’ll tell you! Then adopt a Strong Towns approach to public investment: do the next, smallest thing you can to address the safety issue. Do it fast. Do it immediately. Then lather, rinse, repeat.

The federal and state governments have tools at their disposal to address the crisis as well, and must use them. Dangerous By Design stresses local action, but doesn’t let higher levels of government off the hook. A lot of destructive design guidance remains codified in state and federal policies, and these agencies must take safety seriously and back it up with where the money goes. The report points out that the most recent federal infrastructure package continues to prioritize state discretion in how the funds are spent. States can use this discretion to steer federal funds toward safety-related projects. But the U.S. Department of Transportation also needs to use its leverage and its bully pulpit to make safety priority number one. And Congress, says the report, should fully fund existing, but unfunded, programs that make safe, healthy, productive streets a priority.

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