More than 7,500 pedestrians were killed by cars last year, marking a 40-year high, according to a preliminary report from the Governors Highway Safety Association. Over 1,000 of those fatalities occurred in California.
Marin Cogan, who covers transportation and traffic safety for Vox.com, says about 40,000 overall road fatalities happen in the U.S. annually, which is equal to the number of gun deaths, while other places such as Canada, Western Europe, and Australia are getting safer for people on foot or bikes.
A big theory for the U.S. spike is that COVID shifted normal traffic patterns. Typically, she says traffic congestion prevents people from speeding, but when roads cleared up, those who did get behind the wheel were more reckless. A rise in COVID-era mental health problems could have contributed too.
However, last year, people started driving at all hours again, and deaths continued. Cogan attributes that to a prolonged “breakdown of the social contract” that began during the pandemic.
“People are less patient, are less used to being out in public with other people. And we're still feeling the effects of that, even though the traffic patterns have begun to return to normal.”
One problem, she points out, is the American favoritism for larger vehicles, such as trucks and SUVs, which started during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Concerns over their hazard swirled, so U.S. regulators and manufacturers made them safer — but only for people inside the vehicles, not outside.
“A lot of these vehicles, as they become bigger, have become much more dangerous. They're heavier, they have more blind spots, and they're much more dangerous to people who are struck outside of vehicles. And there's been really no effort to get a handle on that.”
Cogan concedes that some warning technologies, such as the backup camera, have helped drivers stay aware of pedestrians.
Still, she says, “We should take a ‘yes and’ approach to these forms of technology. But we also can't deny that this is saving a few hundred lives a year. But we have mountains of evidence and data suggesting that big vehicles — just by their very nature, by their weight, by their size — are more deadly to pedestrians. It suggests to me that this problem is going to get worse for as long as we maintain our commitment to these big vehicles.”
Making a car electric doesn’t help, either. Cogan notes that EVs are significantly heavier than traditional gas cars.
Then the roads themselves encourage high speeds. “A big part of it is our built infrastructure, which we built in the post-war era in this country. … This idea that people are going to want to drive into the city for work and come out to the suburbs … to spend time with their family, recreation, that sort of thing … created a car-dependent society and created a need for a road system that would facilitate that. So a lot of the roads in our country are built very straight. … [They are] so straight and wide and open that they encourage you to drive faster than you would if you were, say, driving on a small neighborhood street.”
Plus, when Angelenos get brief relief from typically clogged roads, they take advantage and think they can make up for lost time.
“This urbanist and former traffic engineer named Chuck Marohn talked about this once. He said, ‘If you treat people like caged animals, they will behave like caged animals.’ … [The U.S. transit system is] often a very stressful thing for people. And they're just trying to get through it as quickly as possible. And that creates a bunch of negative externalities for people who are sharing the road with them, and especially people who aren't inside of vehicles.”
Law enforcement can’t catch everyone misbehaving either. Cogan says, “There's a greater understanding … and a whole body of research about the ways in which traffic enforcement can be racially discriminatory and discriminatory against people who don't have the means to pay for their tickets and fines. So we've had all of these incidents of killings of civilians that began with traffic stops, right. … The way that we have done traffic enforcement in this country is deeply flawed.”
She adds, “How do we make sure we keep the most dangerous drivers off the road? That's the second piece of it that I think we really haven't figured out as a society yet.”