3 ms·
> And our reality is one where more pedestrians and bicyclists are getting killed on U.S. streets than at any time in the past 45 years – over 1,000 bicyclists
by tzs 2y ago
> And our reality is one where more pedestrians and bicyclists are getting killed on U.S. streets than at any time in the past 45 years – over 1,000 bicyclists and 7,500 pedestrians in 2022 alone
It links to https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... for that 7500 pedestrians in 2022 figure.
Yet on that very same page there is a table of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths going back to 1975, which shows that 1977-1981 all had more pedestrian deaths (7732, 7795, 8096, 8070, and 7837) than 2022 (7522). Several of those years are within the last 45 years.
For bicyclists 2022 is indeed the biggest year just edging out 1977 (1084 vs 1003).
This might be forgiven as just being a little sloppy. If he'd just have said "past 40 years" instead of "past 45 years" then it would have been accurate.
But wait...the US population was 338 million in 2022, and around 220 million in 1979. We really should look at rates.
2020 pedestrian deaths per 100k population were 2.22. They were above that every year from 1975-1991. Same for bicyclists--every year from 1975-1991 was higher than 2020.
For pedestrians the rates peaked in 1979 at 3.76 then declined fairly linearly to 1.33 in 2009, then rose again fairly linearly to 1.95 in 2020, then jumped a bit to 2.22 for 2021 and 2022. Same pattern for bicyclists.
Here's a graph of the rates by year [1]. The bicyclist rates are per 1m instead of per 100k to make them easier to read.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/BJ2h9o9 https://imgur.com/a/BJ2h9o9
- Gunax 2y agoI just want to thank you for this effort post. It looks like the general thrust of 'pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are increasing' may be true, even if the particular examples given are not
- fransje26 2y agoCan you do a correlation plot or a comparison plot with the percentage of SUVs being sold/on the road? Edit: Mmm.. Possibly correlates more with smartphone usage..
- tzs 2y agoHere's something [1]. Data on the car market makeup by year is from here [2]. I only used the data for every 5 years because it is in a stacked line chart and I had to turn it into a table by measuring the heights of the various sections and lack the patience to do it for every year [3]. I omitted pickups and vans/minivans because the pickup share hasn't varied much and vans/minivans have a small share and including them made the graph too hard to read. Here are the shares in table form so you can mentally add them back if you wish. Minivans Sedans & Truck Car & Pickups Vans SUVs SUVs Wagons 1975 13% 4% 2% 0% 81% 1980 13% 2% 2% 0% 83% 1985 13% 6% 4% 0% 78% 1990 13% 9% 4% 2% 72% 1995 15% 11% 7% 2% 65% 2000 15% 7% 17% 4% 57% 2005 13% 7% 19% 4% 57% 2010 11% 4% 22% 9% 54% 2015 11% 4% 28% 9% 48% 2020 15% 2% 37% 11% 35% 2023 17% 2% 46% 11% 24% [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/pedestrian-death-rates-car-market-makeup-SAVFN8u https://imgur.com/gallery/pedestrian-death-rates-car-market-... [2] https://www.theautopian.com/heres-the-exact-year-suv-sales-overtook-sedan-sales-in-america/ https://www.theautopian.com/heres-the-exact-year-suv-sales-o... [3] Yes, I first tried ChatGPT. It was able to turn the chart into a table, but it too only did every 5th year, and some of its numbers were quite a bit off.