Pedestrian Deaths Ballooned Against Miles Driven Last Year

The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) released the latest data pertaining to U.S. pedestrian fatalities — indicating that the largest-ever annual increase since we started keeping track in 1975. While the data is preliminary, the association estimated there were 6,721 pedestrian deaths in 2020. It’s a 4.8 percent increase over 2019 and not all that impressive until you realize most people basically gave up their normal driving routine during lockdowns. According to the GHSA, adjusting for miles driven actually results in an annual increase of 21 percent.

It’s genuinely creepy and kind of perplexing with everyone staying isolated. But we’re not going to recommend you start wearing high visibility jackets whenever you leave your home because the mathematical likelihood of being crushed by an automobile remains incredibly low.

The pedestrian fatality rate of 2.2 per billion vehicle miles traveled (through the first half of 2020) may represent a sizable rise over the same period in 2019, but it’s also relatively slight in terms of daily hazards. Slip-and-fall accidents take out roughly 17,000 every year and murders average around 15,000 — substantially more than the 6,721 people that perished on the streets in 2020.

But we’re just trying to offer some perspective, not ignore what appears to be a growing problem.

“Reckless driving was really impacting pedestrian safety during the pandemic and that is mind boggling to us because we know that vehicle miles traveled dropped,” Pam Shadel Fischer, the Governors Highway Safety Association’s senior director of external engagement, told ABC News in a recent interview.

From ABC:

Earlier this year, the National Safety Council (NSC), a nonprofit focused on promoting safety in the United States, said despite a 13 [percent] drop in miles driven in 2020, the estimated rate of death on the roads last year spiked 24 [percent] over the previous 12-month period.

“We believe that the open roads really gave drivers an open invitation marked open season on reckless driving,” Maureen Vogel, director of communications at NSC, said in an interview with ABC News at the time.

Despite the overall increases, GHSA found that 19 states saw decreases in the number of pedestrian deaths in 2020, with 11 states, including Maine, Hawaii and Delaware, reporting double-digit declines.

We’re inclined to disagree that it’s simply a matter of open roads causing the problem. Urban environments are, by far, the areas where the most pedestrian fatalities take place, and many of the states that saw the largest declines were actually places that previously had some of the highest fatality rates per 100,000 people. If there’s a common trait between the regions that have seen a noteworthy increase or decrease in pedestrian deaths, it’s well incredibly well hidden.

The only thing we can say for certain is that warmer states typically have more pedestrian deaths by nature of having a populace that’s spending more time outdoors. It’s also possible that the nicer climate makes drivers more aggressive, much like how crime goes up during the summer months.

[Image: Room 76/Shutterstock]