Everyone is a pedestrian

Everyone is a pedestrian* at some time, and most know to keep their distance from moving traffic. Despite that, pedestrians were among the few categories of road users where deaths rose, accounting for 14% of total traffic fatalities in 2011, up 3% from 2010. If the proportions remain the same, we can expect that one pedestrian will be injured every 8 minutes and one will die every 2 hours in a traffic crash this year. Download PDF

Nearly 3 out of 4 pedestrian deaths occur in urban environments (73%), at non-intersections (70%), during the nighttime (70%), and many involve alcohol. More than a third (37%) of the pedestrians killed, and 1 in 8 (13%) of the drivers in pedestrian fatalities, had blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) of .08 g/dL or higher in 2011, the illegal limit in every State. Either the driver or pedestrian, or both, had some alcohol in 47% of all fatal pedestrian crashes.

What we know is that pedestrians and drivers do not obey laws and signals consistently and many often use cell phones and music players while walking or driving. Only 60% of pedestrians said they expected drivers to stop when they were in crosswalks, even though they have the right-of-way (Review of Studies on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, 1991-2007, Download PDF

*NHTSA defines a pedestrian as any person on foot, walking, running, jogging, hiking, in a wheelchair, sitting, or lying down. Crashes that occurred exclusively on private property, including parking lots and driveways, are not included in NHTSA's FARS and GES databases but are gathered in NHTSA's Not-In-Traffic Surveillance System (www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811085.pdf, and www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811116.pdf).

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