The Daily - Why Are So Many More Pedestrians Dying in the U.S.?

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

A puzzling new pattern has taken hold on American roads: pedestrian traffic deaths, which had been on the decline for years, have skyrocketed.Emily Badger, who covers cities and urban policy for The Upshot at The New York Times, discusses her investigation into what lies behind the phenomenon.Guest: Emily Badger, who covers cities and urban policy for The Upshot at The New York Times.Background reading: Why are so many U.S. pedestrians dying at night?The exceptionally American problem of rising roadway deaths.More theories on the rising pedestrian deaths at night.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. A puzzling new pattern has taken hold on American roads. Pedestrian traffic deaths, which had been on the decline for years, have skyrocketed. Today, my colleague Emily Badger on her investigation into why. It's Thursday, January 4th. So, Emily, you spent months investigating a very surprising trend, and that is pedestrian deaths after decades of declines are now rising. So we wanted to talk to you about that investigation and really look closely at this question of why. But before we get there, tell me how you came to this story. Where'd you begin? So I write about urban policy for The Times, which means I write about transportation,

among other things, and sort of how people use it and how we get around and how important it is to our lives. And this one very apparent pattern keeps coming up over and over again, which is that there has been this traffic safety crisis in America affecting in particular pedestrians. You know, for years and years throughout the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s, roads in America were becoming safer and safer for pedestrians. And then something changes around 2009. All of a sudden, roads start to become more dangerous year over year to the point where more than 3,000 additional pedestrians died in 2021 compared to 2009. And it's this incredible mystery for a

number of reasons. One of them is that we don't see anything like this in other industrialized countries. You know, we don't see pedestrian deaths rising. If anything, they're falling in other countries. So in this mystery, you know, there's something particular to the United States going on. There's something that starts around 2009 going on. And figuring out exactly what that is is not incredibly obvious. Even transportation researchers and regulators and engineers don't entirely know what's going on here. So Emily, what did you do? How did you try to solve this mystery in your reporting? So I worked on this project alongside a colleague of mine, Ben Blatt. He spent a lot of time

looking at federal fatality data in the United States. The federal government records a lot of data every time someone dies on American roadways. You know, we know about what kind of car was involved in the collision. How old was the driver? how old was the person who was killed, what time of day did this happen. And Ben discovers looking through this data, so many of these deaths that are happening among pedestrians in the United States are happening at night. And in fact, the vast, vast majority of the rise in pedestrian fatalities in America that starts around 2009 is occurring when it's dark out after sunset. So you're saying the overall increase is entirely because of these nighttime deaths. That is what's driving the change. About 85% of the rise in pedestrian fatalities in America since 2009 is entirely attributable

to pedestrians dying in the darkness. And so Ben and I set off to try to solve this incredibly difficult puzzle. I mean, it is basically like a three-sided Rubik's Cube where we're trying to find answers that fit three different criteria. What is something that starts around 2009? What is something that is particular to the United States that doesn't show up in other countries? And what is something that would explain effects that are worse at night than during the daytime? Okay, so let's dig into that. What did you start to find? So Ben and I go out and we start collecting lots of very different theories about what could be contributing to this problem. And let's start with maybe the most obvious one, smartphones.

to this problem. And let's start with maybe the most obvious one, smartphones. This timeline lines up fairly well with the rise of the smartphone in America. Apple introduces the iPhone in 2007. It very rapidly becomes ubiquitous. And smartphones introduce new kinds of distraction into cars. And they're also becoming ubiquitous at the same time as there is just this general proliferation of technology inside of vehicles. You know, it used to just be that you had four or five dials that you could manipulate by touch that you had memorized. You know, this is the one that controls temperature and this is the one that controls the radio and you didn't have to look at them. And now you have to do five different touchscreens and five different buttons to try to figure out how to turn the heat up. Yeah. And, you know, effectively, we have something like a smartphone writ large attached to

the inside of the car in addition to the one in your hand. And so that's potentially introducing distraction as well. But other countries have smartphones and have stuff on the dashboard like that, too. So why would it be different in the U.S.? Right. So then we have to start thinking about it a little bit harder. And it's like, is there something about smartphones that suggests that they're being used differently by drivers in America than in other parts of the world? And we encounter some evidence that I think that this is true. And this appears in some data that tracks how drivers actually use their phones, whether or not they're picking them up, touching them, tapping them, moving around while they're in moving cars. And it appears that

American drivers are doing this more than they are in other countries. But there's also sort of one other factor, and this is probably my favorite thing that I learned in the course of reporting on this, which is that if you think about the kinds of cars that we drive in America, overwhelmingly, almost all of us drive automatic transmission vehicles. And these are cars that require kind of one hand to drive on the steering wheel. And the second hand for much of your time, many people can do other things with it, including picking up a smartphone. But this is not true in many peer countries that we would compare the United States to. In most of Europe, manual transmissions are far, far, far more common. And a manual transmission vehicle is a vehicle that takes two hands to drive.

So even if there weren't cultural differences and expectations around whether or not it's okay to use your smartphone while you're driving, you literally cannot use your smartphone while you're driving as much in many parts of the world where everyone is driving a stick shift. Right, because physically it's pretty difficult. Yeah, and just to put this in perspective, the share of cars sold in America this year that have a stick shift is about 1%. Wow. The share of cars on the road in Europe that have a stick shift is 70 to 75 percent. So the vast majority of cars on the road in Europe are stick shifts. The vast majority of them in America are not. Interesting. Okay, so that's a big and very compelling theory. But what about the nighttime question, though, Emily?

I mean, do most people use their phones distractedly when they're behind the wheel actually at night? Yeah. So this is another part of the puzzle that we have to think a little bit harder about. It's not like people are only using them once the sun sets. But we have a reason to think that people use them more in the nighttime. And, you know, we came across some data from a company that actually tracks how people are touching and manipulating their phones while they're driving. And their data suggests that distracted driving is most common in the evening time. Interesting. Why? I mean, I think that's sort of consistent with the idea that, you know, you get off of work

and now is when you're coordinating with your significant other about who's going to pick up the kids or go to the grocery store or with your friends who you're making plans to meet at a bar. There's sort of social activity and coordination and communication. And another theory that someone gave me was that this is also when a lot of people, particularly in the United States, are responding to after hours work messages. We have this kind of uniquely American always on work culture that says that like when your workday ends, you're still responsible for paying attention to work and responding to things. And this is a small thing. I don't want to suggest that, like, you know, this is the overarching thing that explains all of this, but it's a small cultural thing that is different in the United States from other countries that we would compare

ourselves to. Right. Okay, so phone use checks a lot of these boxes, right? America's different in this way. There's a nighttime reason for it. And it coincides with the year that the trend really took off, 2009. What else did you find in your quest to solve this mystery? So I think another big, obvious thing that happens over the same time period is that American cars are getting bigger. And these bigger cars have higher hoods. And a higher hood smashes into a pedestrian, not at the legs, but at the chest, at the torso, at the head, in these more deadly pain points. And it's also the case that bigger, heavier cars brake slower. So if someone driving one of these cars sees a pedestrian getting ready to cross the street and they hit the brakes, that car may still collide

with that pedestrian. And researchers will tell you that a large part of the reason why the overall fatality rates in the United States are so much higher than they are in other countries has to do, among other things, with the fact that the vehicles that we drive here are so big. But I guess I sort of thought, Emily, that American cars had always been big. I mean, I remember going to Europe for the first time and thinking all the cars there looked like little sneakers or skateboards or something, you know, that American cars were so much bigger forever. Yeah. So if we come back to our three-sided Rubik's Cube, like this is one element where cars getting bigger doesn't quite fit our puzzle. It's part of the picture, but it's probably not

the central most important theory involved here because this is not something that starts in 2009. I mean, Americans were driving SUVs back in the 90s. And it's also clear to us when we look at this federal fatality data, you know, smaller cars, sedans, they are killing more pedestrians today than they did 15 years ago. So it's not just that there are fewer smaller cars, even smaller cars are killing more pedestrians now than they used to. And if we really believed it was the case that most of this change over the last 15 years is driven by cars getting bigger, then we would think that fatalities would be rising during the daytime too, right? Right. Like a Ford 150 pickup truck is just as deadly at noon as it is at 10 p.m. Right. So now we have to start thinking about if the cars themselves don't explain this puzzle,

if the behavior of drivers alone can't explain all of this puzzle. Now Ben and I are starting to think, what is happening outside of vehicles? What's happening in the country around cars that's contributing to this problem? We'll be right back. Okay, so Emily, you and Ben keep going. You look beyond the car, beyond the driver, into the world outside. What do you find? Yeah, so there may be other things happening in the country over this time

that would mean that more pedestrians are in situations where they might be exposed to a deadly crash. So these are the sort of exposure theories. Okay, so explain that and give me an example. Yeah, so one theory points to this kind of broader demographic trend. Americans have been moving toward sunbelt parts of the country, you know, toward warmer parts of the country, metropolitan areas in Texas, in Florida. And these are places that happen to have historically very bad pedestrian safety records. And why is that? So these are parts of the country that developed much more recently than New York City, Philadelphia,

Chicago. They developed in the auto age after cars became ubiquitous. And they're fundamentally built around cars. They don't have strong transit networks. They don't have a lot of pedestrian infrastructure. They're built around the assumption that everyone drives everywhere they go. And maybe there are very few crosswalks or stoplights. There are a lot of high-speed arterial roads. These are these really wide, high-speed roads that still occasionally have stoplights in the middle of them. And these are the kind of place where if you're a pedestrian and you want to cross the street, maybe you have to walk half a mile up the road to be able to do that. You know, that type of development is extremely common in

these parts of the country where people have increasingly been moving. Okay, so in other words, exposure to danger is higher in a place that's built around the car, not the walking person. And as more people move to places like this, and the Sunbelt is one of those places, then more people are actually exposed to that danger. That's the theory. And just to give you an example, Florida especially really pops out in this data. And over this time period that we've been talking about since 2009, pedestrian deaths there are up by about 70%. Wow, 70%.

Yeah. And, you know, that's not totally surprising when you think about the fact that to come back again to the parts of the country that have really been booming in population, I'm thinking of places like Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach. Like, these are places that rank in the top 10 of the most dangerous for pedestrian safety at the same time. Right. But, you know, these are also places that I'm sure you know as a demographics reporter and in the top 10 of the most dangerous for pedestrian safety at the same time. Right. But, you know, these are also places that I'm sure you know as a demographics reporter, and I know as a former one, are big for retirees. So does aging have to do with the trend at all? Yeah, this is another demographic story that's happening in the background in America over this time period that we're talking about. I mean, the American population is just getting older.

But what we see here is actually that it's not older people who are really driving this trend. It's more working age people. It's people, you know, aged 18 to 64 or so. Okay, so what else are you seeing, Emily? So another big shift that's happening in many American cities over part of this time is that homelessness is rising. And with homelessness, we are literally talking about extremely vulnerable people

living adjacent to roads, living in highway interchanges in underpasses of major roads. And this is a theory that fits another part of our puzzle, in that these are people who are present on roads at night. But homelessness in America really sort of starts to rise in many cities around 2016 or so. So this isn't a story that begins way back in 2009 or that has some abrupt sort of change in trajectory around that time period. But it is very clear in recent data just over the last few years that very large numbers of pedestrians who are killed in some cities have been homeless. You know, just to give you one example, in Los Angeles, when I look at their pedestrian fatality data there, it looks like

about 30% of their deaths recently have been among homeless people. Wow. So that means that this has to be at least part of what's going on here. So Emily, you're talking about people being on dangerous roads at times when it's dark out. And you know, I remember when I was a national reporter, I started to notice that low-income people were actually moving out of expensive inner cities into much less expensive suburbs, and that many of those people I was interviewing and I was going to report on couldn't afford cars. And they'd actually be walking down the street early in the morning when it's dark out to go to work. And the street wouldn't be just a little country road. It would be a major highway. Is that part of what's going on here too? I think that has absolutely got to be part of the story as well.

I mean, here what we're talking about is this national trend of the suburbanization of poverty. Lower income people moving into suburban environments, which very similar to the Sunbelt environments we were just talking about. These are places that have very few crosswalks. They often have no sidewalks at all. And we're talking about people moving into those environments who, you know, they may be doing shift work, working odd hours. They may be relying on buses that come in frequently. And that is potentially increasing exposure as well of people who are likely to be out on the most dangerous roads in circumstances where they may be hit by a car. In Portland, Oregon, for example, there are these notoriously dangerous

arterial roads on the eastern side of the city where historically pedestrian infrastructure has been really lacking. And over the last decade or so, this is where people who have been priced out of more expensive neighborhoods in Portland have been moving to. And there's research that sort of suggests that this kind of pattern that I've just described in Portland is apparent more nationally. And it appears as if pedestrian fatalities are actually declining in downtowns and where they're rising is in suburban environments like the one I've just described. So this suggests, actually, that the people who are being killed are probably some of the most vulnerable in American society. Low-income people walking to work along a highway in the middle of

the night going to a shift, can't afford a car, and homeless people. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, the federal fatality data that we're looking at here doesn't tell us, for instance, what's the income of the person who died. But there's other research that suggests that these kind of fatality hotspots, these most dangerous roads, are disproportionately occurring in low-income neighborhoods. And that means that this problem falls the heaviest on the most disadvantaged people. Emily, looking back on everything that you found, would you say that you've solved the mystery? I don't think we solved the mystery in the sense that we didn't uncover one obvious thing that explains all of this problem. I think the best possible explanation is that multiple things have been happening over the same time.

And those things are interacting with each other. They're amplifying each other. Darkness makes all of them worse. Those things are interacting with each other. They're amplifying each other. Darkness makes all of them worse. And I think where Ben and I really land in thinking about this is that we have this fundamentally risky transportation infrastructure in the United States. You know, we had this very clear example of this during the pandemic where many fewer people were driving.

There were far fewer cars on the road. This was true all over the world. And in most countries, fatalities declined because fewer people were on the road. And you would think that the same thing would have happened in the United States, but it didn't. The opposite happened. Fewer people were driving and still more people were dying. More people were dying in all kinds of traffic fatalities, including pedestrians. Why? I think that gets back to the same sort of underlying idea here. You know, during the pandemic, you take a lot of the cars off the road,

you take a lot of the people away from the picture, and you can see really crystal clear what's left. It's this transportation system that we've built that is designed for speed. And all of a sudden, when there were fewer cars on the road, the drivers who remained felt very comfortable driving fast, driving recklessly, and that had these deadly consequences. Interesting. So what does that mean, Emily? What do you take away from that? I mean, I think this tells us that our system is not designed to protect pedestrians.

It's not designed to prioritize safety. And thinking about this, this story really touched a nerve with a lot of our readers. I mean, I heard from hundreds of them, and many of them had their own theories, which are things that we didn't even touch on here. But, you know, some of them also told me, I think it's about pedestrian behavior. Pedestrians don't look both ways before crossing the street like they used to in the olden days. You know, they no longer wear light colors at night. They're looking down at their phones and they're bringing this risk on themselves. And I think the reality is that if we look at other countries, you know, they are producing much safer outcomes and they're not doing it by taking pedestrian cell phones away or making pedestrians wear reflective gear or spending a lot of money on public service campaigns

that are teaching pedestrians how to avoid being hit by cars. They're doing it by fundamentally investing in how they design safe roads and making a fundamental commitment in their laws and in their regulations to prioritizing safety over cars traveling as fast as possible. And what does that mean about the U.S. and what's happening here? So what that means here is that if we want to see fewer pedestrian fatalities, we need to do those same things. We need to be changing our roads to make them safer. You know, we need to be telling drivers that if you're running through red lights, the penalties for that are real, that we care about

safety. But in order for us to do those kinds of things, you know, that requires a big cultural change to how we have thought about and designed and used roadways in America for decades. Emily, thank you. Thanks, Sabrina. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Wednesday, more than 100 people died in Iran in a pair of explosions near the tomb of Qasem Soleimani, Iran's former security chief. The blasts, which left hundreds more wounded, happened on the four-year anniversary of Soleimani's death in an American drone strike.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement blaming the attack on Iran's, quote, malicious and criminal enemies, but stopped short of naming any group or country. Today's episode was produced by Muj Zaydi and Claire Tennesketter. It was edited by John Ketchum, contains original music by Diane Wong, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.