The Dangerous By Design Report

If the streets in your city are not designed for you and your kids, parents, or grandparents to walk or ride a bike, they are dangerous by design. Are there transit and mobility options for people to get around without a car? If not, your city streets are designed to prioritize traffic, not people.

Automobile crashes are occurring in every city in the US, including a rash of recent crashes at certain intersections in Asbury Park. The time is NOW to take a serious look at the way our streets are designed, and demand change.  Our cities are designed to prioritize drivers of motor vehicles leading to more deaths and fatalities than ever.

“The four most recent years on record (2016-2019) are the most deadly years for pedestrian deaths since 1990. During this ten-year period, 53,435 people were hit and killed by drivers.

In 2019, the 6,237 people killed is the equivalent of more than 17 people dying per day. ”

This doesn’t include 2020, the year of COVID when traffic fatalities went up, with less driving.

Learn about Dangerous By Design, and add your name to the petition for the 2021 Federal Complete Streets Bill.

Dangerous By Design 2021

 

The number of people struck and killed by drivers nationwide while walking increased by an astonishing 45 percent over the last decade (2010-2019).

The four most recent years on record (2016-2019) are the most deadly years for pedestrian deaths since 1990. During this ten-year period, 53,435 people were hit and killed by drivers.

In 2019, the 6,237 people killed is the equivalent of more than 17 people dying per day. 

The risk is not evenly distributed

Older adults, people of color, and people walking in low-income communities are disproportionately represented in fatal crashes involving people walking—even after controlling for differences in population size and walking rates.

Although people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and income levels suffer the consequences of dangerous street design, some neighborhoods and groups of people bear a larger share of the burden than others, which may contribute to the indifference of many policymakers to this astonishing increase. From 2010-2019, Black people were struck and killed by drivers at a 82 percent higher rate than White, non-Hispanic Americans. For American Indian and Alaska Native people, that disparity climbs to 221 percent.

America’s streets are deadly. For too long, federal policy has prioritized high-speed driving at the expense of safety; tens of thousands of people are killed every year because of it. The number of people struck and killed by drivers while walking increased by 45 percent over the last decade. We are in the midst of an astonishing safety crisis as the United States has become an incredibly deadly place to go for a walk.

But a handful of leaders in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced a bill that would finally require states and metro areas to design and build safer streets for everyone. The Complete Streets Act of 2021 is desperately needed but it will take your support—and the support of your members of Congress—to get this bill passed into law.

Support this long-awaited federal Complete Streets bill—tell your senators and representative to co-sponsor the Complete Streets Act