Pedestrian safety is a permanent concern in The United States and there is a strong reason for it.
People are still dying because of several mistaken choices made by drivers, planers, besides a high number of people who walk in lower-income areas.
The alarming number is real and clear to those who want to be part of this urgent call for changes. It is time to improve and spread the consciousness of how the community can mitigate the tragic statistics of 53,435 people who died between 2010 and 2019 in the country.
This sad statistic came from a study by Smart Growth America in the last edition of Dangerous by Design 2021, which was discussed the cause of accidents involving people who got hit by drivers in the United States.
The number represents a 45% increase making it even worst during the last decade.
The study also explains the effect of speeding the ugly statistics, considering high speed as one of the major reasons responsible for unsafe environments for pedestrians. This could be a good motivation for changing this behavior. For instance, if some driver hits someone at 40 mph, 85% of the cases result in death. Overspeed control is also a permanent goal for designers focusing on improving safety.
People are aware of the dangers of speeding, but the behavior should change at once and for good by cutting the bad habits of keeping high speed where it is not expected in school zones for instance.
Yet, according to Dangerous by Design, Florida is still a top-ranked of the unsafest states for pedestrians.
On the other hand, Florida is working on reversing it to make streets and intersections safer. One of the good news that brings us hope is House Bill 357 and Senate Bill 1474 which should help control the speed at school zones. If these bills pass, students will be even safer, and violated drivers will be identified.
In this edition of Dangerous by Design, there is some advice on what could be done to help these statistics decrease such as, getting more policymakers’ attention on this matter, improvement of data accuracy, and lowering the high speeds.
Even though this is an urgent call, people are not conscious enough to change their behavior once drivers have not changed their behavior for the last decade.
Education is always welcome to cut this number off and it should work together with planers and technology.
FTA is working to increase accuracy through its solutions, such as the midblock pedestrian solution which gives data collection to authorities from the pedestrian crosswalk and is also able to identify vehicles that disrespect signalization. Also, there is a speed control system that is ready to help Florida when the Bills cited above pass.
Technologies are available to improve the data collection by working 24/7 besides optimizing human resources, like police officer’s time.
It is time to put everything together in name of safety and make sure the next decade will be recalled as the decade of mitigation of these problems.
Author: Degoncir Goncalves
Sources:
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Dangerous-By-Design-2021.pdf
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/357/?Tab=BillText
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/357/BillText/Filed/PDF