As previously discussed here, fatality rates among occupants of automobiles have gone down or stayed constant, but pedestrian fatality rates have alarmingly increased. The best explanation anyone could come up with for this is the rise of smart phones and distracted driving (and walking).
Is distracted driving the main cause of a spike in pedestrian fatalities since 2009?
New data published by the city of Portland suggests an alternative explanation, or at least a contributing factor: homelessness. According to a report issued last week by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, 70 percent of pedestrian fatalities in 2021 were homeless people. San Jose also reports that 20 percent of all 2021 traffic fatalities (which probably means over half of pedestrian fatalities) were homeless.
This helps answer many questions about the pedestrian fatality data. Most pedestrian fatalities, and the majority of the increase in recent years, were late at night, when most people were home in bed. The most dangerous roads, in terms of pedestrian fatalities per billion vehicle miles, were non-freeway arterials, which most pedestrians avoid.
Or is increased homelessness a major driver of the increase in pedestrian fatalities? Photo by Charles Edward Miller.
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Homeless people, however, often make camps near major arterials. They are also more likely to be up at night, when they can forage for food and other essentials. For what it’s worth, Elaine Herzberg, the Arizona woman who was killed by a self-driving car in 2018, was homeless at the time of her death.
Homelessness is complicated as it has many causes: high housing prices, drug addiction, and a failure to adequately care for mentally ill people, to name a few. One otherwise very liberal person I know believes it is partly due to society’s failure to instill a work ethic in young people. It may also be that some cities’ efforts to help homeless people effectively enable homelessness, thus contributing to its increase.
Whatever the causes, if an increase in homelessness is connected with the increase in pedestrian fatalities, then a completely different set of remedies is needed from the ones that are being used. The “vision zero” solution of simply slowing traffic down isn’t working because traffic speeds, at least during the day, don’t seem to be the cause of increased fatalities. Instead, the homelessness explanation suggests we need better separation of pedestrians from traffic and better roadway design.
My investigation into Herzberg’s death found that she was on a pedestrian path that ended at a highway. The path continued on the other side of the highway, but the path didn’t cross the highway at that point. Instead, pedestrians were expected to walk 720 feet out of their way to a traffic signal. This is a terrible design and many pedestrians no doubt skipped the extra walking and crossed the highway where the paths intersected with it — I know I would. This is only one example, but I strongly suspect that better highway design, not mindless slowing of traffic, is the solution to the pedestrian fatality problem.
Homelessness is complicated as it has many causes: high housing prices, drug addiction, and a failure to adequately care for mentally ill people,”
But the overwhelming majority support their habits, namely drugs and alcohol
Over the last two years, crime has swept the US.
Two-thirds of America’s largest cities have seen even more homicides in 2021 than in 2020, with killings rising in New York from 468 to 485, in Chicago from 771 to 797, and in Houston from 400 to 467. More than 13 big cities — including Philadelphia, Austin, and Portland — set all-time records for homicides in 2021.
But one big city — Dallas — has bucked the national trend. From 2020 to 2021, homicides in the Lone Star metropolis have dropped from 254 to 220, and violent crime has nosedived by 12 percent. Hiring new management for Police Chief. They broke Dallas down into a grid of 104,000 squares. ust 50 of those grids are responsible for 10 percent of the violent crime in the city. And so only a relatively small number of areas are responsible for a large amount of crime.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed generated national news media coverage last December when she announced a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood.
Shortly after, she announced a ‘linkage center’ aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities. IN reality turned into a secret drug public den shielded by Government.
The bottom line is that dealing with addiction has changed little since the morphine epidemic in the late 19th Century. Getting loved ones off opioids requires intervention, not enabling. Enabling addicts kills addicts.
The owners of the largest passenger cars on the road actually drove more in 2020 than they did in 2019, according to new data that can also explain why road deaths surged so sharply during the early days of the pandemic. Despite the enduring stereotype of pick-up truck drivers as rugged tradespeople working the nation’s farms and building sites, market research has shown that less than 15 percent are actually employed in such jobs. In reality Most pickup and SUV drivers are just casual folks like you or me who wouldn’t dare touch a bag of dirt maybe once a year…..Most pedestrians are killed on local roads, in the dark and away from intersections, suggesting the need for safer road crossings, better lighting and other measures. During the past 10 years, the number of drivers striking and killing a pedestrian after dark increased by 54 percent, compared to a 16-percent rise in pedestrian fatalities in daylight. Is it behavior?
No it’s lack of pedestrian enforcement and infrastructure. Step 1: Get Bad drivers off the round…
I saw a sample of “Germany DMV driving exam” english translated then saw how German’s how tough and strenuous it is to even get a license. Answer is simple, make the standards decent
Step 2: Penalize bad drivers: US, we have the “Point” system so if you’re involved in accidents or other circumstance
Since 1970 The United States has gone from leading the pack in traffic safety to being at the rear of that pack.
As a Whole EU had 22,000 traffic related fatalities. Almost HALF. There’s a reason for this….
A) A lot tend to live more compactly, Hence speed limits are oriented on he local level to accommodate urban nicety.
B) Their road design favors more vulnerable users such as bikers and pedestrians
C) they have enacted laws and regulations that also favor these vulnerable road users.
US on the other hand, “Fuck Pedestrians”when anyone invokes the “but in Europe” argument (for anything) they leave out the very conservative, law and order hammer that rightfully hits if you don’t hold up your end of the social contract. Progressives in America have for decades grossly misrepresented what they do in Europe, but fail to take into account one factor “Responsibility”
Study human behavior long enough you discover the Incentive principle.
The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads or chocolate or pornography) makes people want that thing even more. Traffic engineers made note of this phenomenon as early as the 1960s, it is only in recent years that social scientists collected enough data to show how this happens pretty much every time we build new roads. Europe is more “Fascistic” but IN America we clamor to defense and whine about oppession when law enforcement enacts decency and public obligation standards.
Why does Europe have such fewer pedestrian deaths…
Simple
1: Lower speed limits
2: Lighter cars
3: Massive public effort to make cities liveable, places for residents
4: Since there’s less crime, Police devote their efforts to safety/enforcement.
5: Most important: Europe didn’t heavily adopt bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure because they care for the environment; that’s side circumstance. They did it because of energy crisis Which they’ve been battling since WWII.
Induced demand is about as real as skunk ape.
Maybe try this?
“After fifty years of working towards a safe, sustainable, and inclusive road system, the Netherlands has made fatality rates for pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicle occupants all converge at a very low level… and it is an incredible achievement.”
https://twitter.com/cycling_embassy/status/1491804290570067974?s=21
janehavisham, a factoid is not a policy. What exactly are you proposing to try?