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U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

• pimpampum 3y ago
  All those Tesla are making a dent.
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    How so?
    • arcanemachiner 3y ago
      I'm guessing it's a bad joke about the errors made by self-driving cars.
  • GrumpyNl 3y ago
    The new Tesla pickup is very pedestrian unfriendly.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    Pedestrians are making a dent in Tesla.
• ALittleLight 3y ago
  "Pedestrian deaths have been climbing since 2010 because of unsafe infrastructure and the prevalence of SUVs, which tend to be more deadly for pedestrians than smaller cars, according to Martin" The report itself shows there's an increase in pedestrian fatalities in slightly fewer than half of states and the increase comes from deaths at night and not in the daytime. How would an increase in SUVs (which is a national trend) cause this result?
  • littlestymaar 3y ago
    > How would an increase in SUVs (which is a national trend) cause this result? It's going to depend a lot on local pedestrian habits and on the available infrastructures: as a thought experiment say in State A people are never walking in the street, while in State B they are walking a lot, then the national increase in SUV will have no impact on pedestrian death in State A but will have on State B.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      Only if this is true. If the increase at night then it's unlikely to be because of SUVs, unless there's correlating evidence that shows it's states where SUVs are driven at night more. If there were evidence found that is linked to nighttime, e.g. because more people are crossing roads at night than before, or wearing less night-visible clothing than before, then that would be the place to start.
      • bombcar 3y ago
        I wonder how much is actually attributable to people moving from one state to another, where the second state doesn't "drive the same" as where they're used to.
      • Moldoteck 3y ago
        there may be different correlations, for example maybe suv's limit too much the visibility at night, but yes, we need more data
      • littlestymaar 3y ago
        > If the increase at night then it's unlikely to be because of SUVs, unless there's correlating evidence that shows it's states where SUVs are driven at night more. Or if you replace “people walk” by “people walk at night” in my example above… That is to say, there are many parameters at stake here, and you cannot infer or refute anything from the aggregated data.
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    I hadn't spotted this, but you're right. It's actually slightly worse - to justify this, the author links to another article titled "Fatal Pedestrian Crashes Increasingly Involve SUVs, Study Finds". I say this is off because an increase in proportion of SUV involvement is primarily an indictator of popularity of SUVs, rather than anything about SUVs being more deadly. I happen to believe, fairly uncontroversially, I think, that SUVs are far more deadly than a regular car, hitting adults in the chest instead of the legs, and children in the head instead of the chest, but I also think poor journalism is pretty dangerous, and worth investigating.
    • ht85 3y ago
      This is completely anecdotal but from my experience bad and inconsiderate drivers also gravitate towards big vehicles.
  • 0xEF 3y ago
    Visibility, maybe? As interior comfort took priority in design, those beefier body columns resulted in larger blind spots. Also, some SUVs are just massive, and might suffer from similar forward-visibility limitations that modern pickup trucks (classified as "light trucks," oddly) are getting slammed for right now, namely the front end being so high that the driver can't see a 3 foot object 16 feet in front of them.
  • Rapzid 3y ago
    > When the pandemic arrived, there was an even greater surge as empty roads gave way to speeding and distracted driving. Wait, so more cars is actually the answer. Fewer cars == more deaths. > The pandemic has waned, but cases of reckless driving — and subsequently the number of Americans killed while walking — has not. Ah crap, maybe everyone has long COVID then?
    • jansan 3y ago
      More cars => fewer pedestrians Sometimes the easiest solutions hide in plain sight.
      • danuker 3y ago
        Survival of the fittest! And the fittest are driving 2-ton death machines.
        • Rapzid 3y ago
          We can stop these senseless pedestrian deaths. One SUV per child; let's gooo! Gonna start working on my TED talk.
    • paulgb 3y ago
      Anecdotally, in NYC it feels like something “clicked” during COVID where some small but meaningful segment of drivers just stopped caring about any social contract. I see more cars blatantly running reds, driving with expired (or no) plates, and doing stupid things to shave a few seconds off their commute.
  • eimrine 3y ago
    > How would an increase in SUVs (which is a national trend) cause this result? Do you agree that a SUV has worse ability to observe the road? Do you agree that a pedestrian has more chances to survive after being hit by a small car? If you answer "yes" to both my question than you have to understand that the real question is "why an increase in SUVs is not causing this result in other states". If your answer is "no" then you are talking not about "this result" but about a something else.
    • ALittleLight 3y ago
      SUVs are certain to be more deadly - they are bigger and higher, but they are replacing older cars and older cars, by dint of lack of modern safety features and degraded condition, are likelier to be in an accident - so the effect of more SUVs is not obvious. Regardless, the fact is that the increase in pedestrian deaths is mostly in a few states and mostly in nighttime driving and SUVs don't explain either of those factors.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • polytely 3y ago
    might even be people being worse at driving because of post-covid brain fog
  • x3874 3y ago
    At some times, if you have to push an agenda.
  • everdrive 3y ago
    Playing devil’s advocate, since I think the article didn’t really address this very well. I would assume that SUVs can have two issues with regard to pedestrian deaths. - Worse outcomes when pedestrians are struck. A lower car might “merely” break legs, while an SUV with a higher belt line might strike a head or vital organ and be more lethal. SUVs tend to weigh more as well, which only hurts pedestrians. - Worse visibility due to higher higher ground clearance, longer hoods, and of course modern rollover protection. I wouldn’t be shocked if you could do a study on pedestrian visibility using a passenger car from 2000, and an SUV from 2023, and found that the SUV had significantly worse visibility of pedestrians.
• sien 3y ago
  Ars has a good article on this : https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/pedestrian-deaths-rose-in-2022-some-states-more-dangerous-than-others/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/pedestrian-deaths-rose-... Check the graph on how there was a big increase in particular states. Source report can be downloaded at : https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians23 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians23 Check page 21 for the report on day vs night deaths. Does anyone have good data on other countries? I've looked at Australia and there is no great pedestrian death increase. So it's unlikely to be mobile phones driving the increase. Go here for the Australian dashboard. https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/road_deaths_australia_annual_summaries https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/road_deaths_au...
  • glimshe 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing. The Ars Technica article focuses on differences between states but I think there is very little to be learned from that chart. For instance, New Jersey is the state with the biggest reduction, but that number represents a reduction from 217 to 190. Does that mean anything? In the previous 3 years, New Jersey had 175, 179 and 217 deaths. The trend is useful for the country as a whole, but the numbers for the individual states are small enough for the per-year variations to represent noise or one-offs (like a major events with drinking, or a nasty accident).
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• hardware2win 3y ago
  Offtop: Cars are pretty sad topic It is sad how many good safety and driving easiness features modern cars have, yet majority of people do not have access to them due to price It is also crazy how unreliable cars actually are. 20 years old car means some surprise every 3rd or 4th drive
  • sfpotter 3y ago
    Much sadder: the car is the only the transportation option many people have in the majority of places in the US. The best way to reduce the number of car accidents is to reduce the number of cars by providing other options.
  • pantulis 3y ago
    > It is also crazy how unreliable cars actually are. 20 years old car means some surprise every 3rd or 4th drive Not so sure about that, petrol engines and cars matured a lot in the last decades. I'm driving a 2004 Ford Focus and it is still going strong, with no "surprises", which, granted, I remember having every drive in 1996 with a 1981 Renault 14. I would considering changing this old car for environmental impact, in-car entertainment or driving safety measures, but not for the reliability of it.
    • bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Yes, I think hardware2win has it backwards. Old vehicles are very reliable, so there are lots of them on the road that are missing safety features like automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection.
      • hardware2win 3y ago
        Hmm I wasnt referring to e.g just engine Ive been talking about electronics too. It feels like there is constant need to fix something. This shit is so annoying. >Old vehicles are very reliable Ive never witnessed a technology as unreliable as cars are. Especially that is relatively expensive piece of tech.
• ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  And until states make texting while driving a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties, it's not going to get better. There's no excuse for it. And this superficial, useless article doesn't discuss it at all. Instead, it regurgitates pablum about the same regressive do-nothing "solution" known as "traffic calming." That's just ruining our streets instead of attacking the real problem.
  • javagram 3y ago
    Traffic calming is just an admission that state and local police are utterly useless to enforce laws against distracted driving and texting. On almost every drive I see people speeding >15 mph over the limit, recklessly weaving in and out of traffic and making dangerous passes to get slightly ahead. The police are doing nothing against this dangerous and illegal behavior and won’t do anything about texting either regardless of the offense level.
    • SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
      In my area it’s because the police are also breaking the same laws. I’ve seen cops drive with defaced license plates on their personal vehicles, park on sidewalks, and recklessly speed. Traffic calming measures would be by some entity the cops can’t control, so they hate them too.
      • DFHippie 3y ago
        Recently, while waiting for a bus, I took a picture of a car with "sheriff" emblazoned on the side stopped in the crosswalk, blocking pedestrian traffic. The police officer just wanted to turn right and didn't bother to stop at the line.
    • mtgx 3y ago
      [dead]
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • 3y ago
• trilbyglens 3y ago
  Every country has its own flavor of bad driving. I live in the Czech republic and people here are very aggressive and inconsiderate drivers. However they are not sloppy or inattentive. The roads here are far too complex and busy to even look at a phone for more than a second or two. By contrast, driving in the us is super duper low stress. Roads are super wide and designed to be ultra comfortable for cars and drivers. As a result people are not alert while driving I think. Another factor is that EVERYONE drives in the us. It doesn't matter if you like it, or are comfortable with it, or even if you're good at it. You HAVE to drive. Over here maybe only 50% of driving age people even have licenses. People who don't like driving don't have to since we have great public transportation. The most sloppy driving I've ever seen is in the us. People weaving in and out of their lane staring at a phone, people driving into ditches, driving through building walls in parking lots you name it. The reality is that many people just should not be driving a car but are forced to by abysmal american infrastructure and even worse city planning.
  • hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    Australia I’ve noticed drivers are substantially worse on long weekends in particular, there are higher death rates which are generally speed and alcohol related but even outside of that the drivers just seem more inattentive than normal, maybe it’s people who otherwise don’t drive regularly, I really don’t know.
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
      I think on long weekends in Australia there is just considerably more driving, and for longer distances. My uneducated guess is that "accident per driver" or "accident per hour driven" is probably relatively flat, but there's just so many more people on the roads during long weekends in aus.
    • bb123 3y ago
      I think this is a known phenomenon which is why Aussie police give double demerits for driving tickets on long weekends.
• jansan 3y ago
  How much does a driver's license cost in the US? What do you have to do in order to get one? Here in Germany, my son has to sit through 14 theory lessons and then pass a theoretical test (with questions out of a pool of 1400 questions). Then he needs 12 mandatory driving lessons (night, highway, country road) and probably 8 more lessons to get him to the rquired level to pass the driving test. This will set me back approx 3000€ ($3000). IMO the requirements for a drivers license in Germany are a bit too strikt, but what I heard from my brother, who got his drivers license in Minnesota during a high school exchange year, the requirements in the US are really, really low. Maybe we can agree on an international standard somewhere in the middle?
  • theshrike79 3y ago
    From movies I've learned that Americans get their licenses in high-school by a teacher who just gives them the license so they don't need to sit through another crappy attempt at the course they built in the parking lot with traffic cones. Dunno how it works for real, but can't be much different =)
    • vanilla_nut 3y ago
      Most states have something like this: - at ~16, you become eligible for a driving permit which allows for supervised driving only - getting the permit requires you to "pass" a pathetic 10ish question exam for which the literal questions and (multiple choice) answers are publicly available - after 6-12 months (again, variable) you become eligible to get your full license - to get a license, you usually need a guardian or affiliated adult to sign a form saying they taught you for over 40 hours of supervised driving. - sometimes you also need a "safety class" or possible a "driver's education" class. Driver's education can be useful, since it's literally just a teacher riding around in a car driven by students and pointing out where the students go wrong. Safety classes are almost invariably useless, since they mostly just regurgitate rules of the road and obvious safety tips that most students immediately forget. - Once you become eligible for a license, you go to a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the same place where you got your permit. Schedule an appointment, and an employee will take you for a driving test. In the driving test, you have to show your mettle at serious challenges like parallel parking a car, stopping at stop signs, looking over your shoulder while changing lanes, and looking both ways before making a turn at a stop. This basic test has a less than 50% passing rate, but you can take it as many times as you like so even the worst drivers eventually jump through the hoop. So basically the process you imagined but with more time and hoops where the government gets to charge you $$.
• penjelly 3y ago
  in canada drivers are usually respectful/good but theres still an attitude that drivers own the road and pedestrians are an afterthought. Theyll pull into intersections blocking the cross walk, or begin a left turn very early or blindly while people are crossing. stuff like that reminds you that the city was built for cars and not pedestrians, and i think thats the systemic thing that should change to prevent deaths
• trashface 3y ago
  Already discussed to death literally yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480122 Am I living in groundhog day?
  • majewsky 3y ago
    Different people are online at different times. Maybe the submitter didn't see the first submission because it had already dropped off the frontpage when they came online.
    • timbit42 3y ago
      Maybe put the search bar at the top of the front page instead of the bottom to help people realize it is available and to encourage people to use it.
• dghughes 3y ago
  Sunrise and sunset are bad times for car crashes especially in cities where streets line up with the sun. In my town there is one street that in winter with a wet salty road is like a mirror. The sun at a certain time during a certain time of year plus the "salt mirror" makes it practically impossible to see.
• redwood 3y ago
  Next thing you know, akin to biking, people will be recommending you walk with a helmet
  • faeyanpiraat 3y ago
    Well, the chance of something falling on your head is low but never 0.
  • Gigachad 3y ago
    Should have been wearing hi vis and holding a flag while walking.
• joshfederer 3y ago
  [dead]
• NoNameHaveI 3y ago
  This really hits home for me. I live in Orlando, Florida and work is a scant 1.7 miles away. However, I do not dare drive or walk to work. Why? Pedestrian fatalities. This is a real shame not only because of pollution, and missed opportunity for exercise, but often because the traffic is so bad, it would only take marginally more time to walk/bike than drive. I really wish road engineers would ensure ALL roads (sans expressways/interstates) have protected bike/ped zones. Not just a stripe on the pavement that can be easily driven across by a distracted driver. But actual raised protection, like a median or curb.
  • DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
    > I do not dare drive or walk to work Did you mean that you only drive and don't walk, or do you just always stay home? Anyway, some cities are doing better with bike lanes. Making them areas on the sidewalk (which needs to be pretty big obviously), or organizing a road as (traffic | parking | bike lane) rather than (traffic | bike lane | parking). Pretty slow going though, and only denser cities.
• asimpleusecase 3y ago
  Not to blame the victims but recently I’ve noticed pedestrians doing a lot of dumb stuff that is not helping. In the past week I’ve had 5 different people crossing multiple lanes of traffic dressed in all dark colours in areas with poor or no street lighting at night. A couple of people I would likely have hit but I caught thier silhouette against car tail lights ahead of me. Do get me stated on people stepping out into traffic at crossing when cars have a green light. People looking at phones and stepping into traffic with I guess the idea that if they don’t look at you you will avoid them. I do think the is distracted walking as well as distracted driving.
  • ticviking 3y ago
    I was just thinking about this. There was a big push in my city to stop “over policing” things like jaywalking and disorderly conduct. We stopped ticketing people for this and over a few years people have started jaywalking and even just chilling and having conversations in a lane.
    • wink 3y ago
      Not a good argument, all around the world people are allowed to cross a road and don't usually stay standing there.
    • yowzadave 3y ago
      Jaywalking is not "wrong"--it's a problem of cultural expectation. In many countries, streets are significantly safer than in the US, and pedestrians are allowed to cross freely at any point. Precisely because it is understood that pedestrians will do this, cars drive more cautiously and defer to the behavior of pedestrians. The street is a shared space, and cars do not have a special privilege to use it over all other transportation means. In the US, however, streets are understood to be owned by cars. Drivers move much faster and without regard for bikes/pedestrians/etc. Even the fact that a pedestrian in the street is called "jaywalking" is an expression of this difference--it's culturally frowned upon, if not actually illegal, for pedestrians to be in the street. So the challenge is: how do you change a culture? There's a better way demonstrated in many other places, but people get very grouchy when you ask them to start acting differently--"It's our way of life!"
• difosfor 3y ago
  City roads should basically not be built for cars but for pedestrians, cyclists, public transportation and only then: cars. Interestingly narrowing roads also helps cars slow down naturally. Build some separate bike lanes while you're at it.
  • eurleif 3y ago
    >Interestingly narrowing roads also helps cars slow down naturally. What an interesting definition of "help". By the same token, you can help pedestrians to slow down by breaking their legs.
    • difosfor 3y ago
      Not really it's just a proven psychological effect applied successfully in many places: people will drive as fast as they feel comfortable. Make it too comfortable and they'll start speeding. This is not to say to actually make it dangerous or impassible or anything of course.
• everdrive 3y ago
  Articles such as this are not wrong to point out SUVs, but I think they miss two other important issues: - Increased driver distraction due to smartphones and in-car touch screens. - Decreased driver visibility due to improved rollover protection. (Ironically, this may largely be the blame of SUVs as well, since passenger cars are much harder to roll over) I can’t go through a single day without seeing some driver looking down at their phone. I honestly wager I could drive better drunk than some drivers can manage when distracted by their phones.
• merek 3y ago
  For those interested in urban planning, including contrasts between the US and places that do it well, I highly recommend the Not Just Bikes youtube channel. The intro video details a short walk in Houston, which is pretty alarming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
• paulryanrogers 3y ago
  At my license renewal I clearly failed the vision test yet they passed me anyway. When I finally got to the eye doctor they said I really should not be driving until getting corrective lenses. Thankfully I was able to minimize driving until getting a cheap pair of glasses. In the US the only way to legally kill on multiple occasions is by vehicle accident. Yet the system is afraid of taking away ones 'right' to drive as it degrades quality of life so much. You can report someone you know is unsafe, though in some states they'll be notified who reported them, causing a chilling effect.
• joker_minmax 3y ago
  The drivers need to put the cell phone down, of course - I was almost run over by an Amazon Prime truck when the driver was on a phone - but the pedestrians need to put the phone down too. Six years ago I was using Google maps to find my way around as a pedestrian, and I walked directly into a pole. Where I live the local news recently did a special on distracted pedestrians walking into things. I know a lot of people like to use headphones to walk around and listen to music, but I also think your ears are a MUST HAVE if you're walking anywhere there could be cars. It's the driver's responsibility to stop, but I live in an area with a lot of blind hills, and you need to hear the car before it crests if you're in the road.
• johnea 3y ago
  Drivers in the US are VERY inattentive. It's reacched the point where operating the vehicle has come to be seen as just a distraction from playing w/ a cell phone. Sadly, pedestrians are ALSO VERY inattentive. My closest encounter to a pedestrian accident was when a pedestrian stepped in front of my car, mid-bloc, on a very dark night, wearing all black, and staring at his phone. The first thing I saw in the dark was his face, lit by the glow of his phone...
  • johnea 3y ago
    When I screached to a halt, to avoid hitting him, he never looked up. He continued to walk across the street staring at his phone...