Something weird is going on in  the streets of the United States.

Over the years, vehicles have  gotten much safer … for the driver. But if you’re not in the vehicle,  the roads are way more dangerous than they were just a decade ago.

To the point that pedestrians now  make up 17% of traffic fatalities. The weird thing is, this problem  seems to be much worse in America. The number of pedestrian deaths here each year is twice as high as it is in an  area of Europe with more people.

If you think you know why, you  might want to hit the brakes. Because there are several reasons U. S. streets have become so deadly for walkers.

And nobody’s talking about some of them, except highway safety researchers and us. [♪ INTRO] Car crashes involving pedestrians are way more common than we’d like them to be. And in the U. S., they’re  becoming more common every year.

From 2010 to 2022, pedestrian  deaths from vehicle impacts here increased by 77% to more than 7,000 annually. The pooled data from 27 European  countries shows less than half that many pedestrian fatalities, despite having  more than 100 million more people. These figures vary state to  state or country to country, but the overall trends are hard  to ignore.

America has a problem. Partly because we’re driving bigger vehicles. Places like the US, China, and the  EU have incentivized manufacturers to make larger vehicles over the last few decades, with less stringent fuel efficiency  requirements on them than smaller cars.

Essentially, when it comes to  regulations, the bigger the vehicle, the less fuel efficient it needs to  be and the more emissions are allowed. And if you’re in the US,  that requirement is lowered another notch for four wheel light trucks. So we’re making more big vehicles.

But we’re also partial to larger vehicles. Over the last decade, vehicles  like crossovers and pickups have gotten more popular, while passenger  cars are being left in the dust. And that’s bad news for pedestrians, according to a study by the Insurance  Institute for Highway Safety.

The researchers there found  that the largest vehicles, which had a hood height of  over a meter from the ground, increased the risk of pedestrian  mortality by at least 44%. This is largely because the way those vehicles hit pedestrians leads to  more severe head injuries. So taller vehicles mean worse head injuries, which in turn increases pedestrian mortality risk.

But that doesn’t tell us if taller  vehicles hit pedestrians more often than smaller vehicles…because they might not. Before I can explain why, we need to run an ad. Thanks to JMP for supporting this SciShow video!

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They offer all that with a  30-day free trial for anyone, anywhere at jmp.com/scishow. In 2002, cars were responsible for more  pedestrian fatalities than light trucks. But that might’ve been because the streets were still crawling with Toyota  Camrys and Honda Accords.

If you take into account  the total distance traveled by the two categories, larger vehicles were worse. And by 2022, the risk from light trucks grew so much that however you looked  at the numbers, they were worse. The biggest culprit of all, though, might be SUVs.

The number of pedestrian fatalities caused by those vehicles rose by 82% from 2009 to 2016. Taken together, this means larger  vehicles are increasingly more involved in collisions with pedestrians, and more  deadly when those collisions happen. But vehicle size is not the only explanation.

The shape of the hood can also play a role. Cars like the 2012 Honda  Odyssey, with sloped hoods, pose lower risk, similar to smaller  sedans like the 2004 Toyota Camry. Vehicles like the 2010 Chevy Colorado,  with a sharper angle at the front and a flatter hood on top, pose a  26% higher risk of pedestrian death.

Even the angle of the hood  seems to make a difference. The Colorado has a lower grade than the Odyssey, and that’s associated with a 25% increase in risk. These cars are not small.

But they’re smaller than the largest SUVs. And once you start talking about those, fatality risk doesn’t really  change based on hood shape. Above a meter hood height, it’s just  more deadly regardless of hood shape.

The sheer size factor is  dangerous for a few reasons, like the cabs of those vehicles can literally  block the road from your line of sight. A study from 2022 put trucks to the test, either putting drivers in a  simulated low-visibility truck cab or a higher visibility truck cab. In the high-visibility cab, none of the drivers hit any pedestrians during the simulation.

In 39 out of the 45 low-visibility tests,  the drivers did hit the pedestrian. Note to self: avoid crossing  in front of big trucks. A study from 2022 found that often,  SUVs and pickups were more likely to hit pedestrians than cars, and the researchers  suspected that has to do with visibility.

Specifically, the design of  something called the A pillar, or the part at the front of the car  that wraps around the windshield. Some vehicles have thicker beams  at the ends of your windshield, which can obscure pedestrians. Small vehicles can have problems with  visibility too, so I’m not picking on pickups.

I’m looking at you Prius. But the gist is, worse visibility  means more pedestrian collisions. So there are a lot of ways that vehicle design can be geared toward pedestrian safety.

But there are factors beyond the car  itself that influence pedestrian safety. Like driver behavior. Pedestrians fare better if drivers  are actually looking out for them.

Between 2005 and 2010, distracted drivers killed almost 2500 pedestrians in the US. And again, while this isn’t only a US problem, the data signals that Americans are  particularly distracted drivers. According to the CDC, in 2011  almost 70% of US adults had talked on their cell phone while driving  in the last 30 days at least once, compared to around 60% in Portugal,  around 50% in the Netherlands, and a mere 20% in the UK.

In fact, over 70% of UK respondents  reported never using their cellphone while driving in the last 30 days, pretty  much the opposite of US respondents. A more recent study by Cambridge  Mobile Telematics looked at more than two years of driving and cell data, and found that US drivers  spend 3 times as much time on their cell phones while  driving compared to UK drivers. Which translates to way more fatalities,  for drivers and pedestrians alike.

Now, I’m sure you’ve been lectured  about distracted driving before. But distracted walking is also a problem. As a pedestrian, you can decrease your  own risk of collision by making sure you’re not distracted by things like  pets, conversations, and phones.

I really need to stop playing  Pokemon Go while crossing the street. It’s also safer if you stay on the sidewalk, but that isn’t always possible since  59% of pedestrian deaths in 2017 occurred on streets where there  was just straight up no sidewalk. And that statistic has been going  up, reaching a peak of 68% in 2021.

No sidewalks means there’s  nothing between a pedestrian and a thousand kilograms of  metal hurtling down the street. So in addition to the vehicles and  the people interacting with them, the roads themselves can  also affect fatality rates. In 2021 and 2022, almost 60% of pedestrian  fatalities happened on arterial roads, which are those higher-speed  streets that aren’t quite free-ways.

No big surprise here, but  faster travel on roadways is more dangerous for pedestrians. The risk of death is 10% at 23 mph,  50% at 42 mph, and 90% at 58 mph. But there are ways to slow  down the flow of traffic and make it safer for pedestrians.

Roads can be designed with sidewalks,  narrower lanes, or rougher pavement. Maybe those potholes are a good thing? One study even suggests steering  clear of paved roads entirely in places and replacing them  with bricks or granite blocks to slow vehicles down and  improve pedestrian safety.

And again, other countries appear to be better at using these traffic interventions than the US. Toward the end of 2023, Wales  changed the default speed limit on many of their roads from 48 kilometers  per hour to 32 kilometers per hour. In the first quarter of 2024, they saw  more than a hundred fewer collisions and fatalities compared to  the first quarter of 2023.

And that trend held for subsequent quarters too. Some communities in the United Kingdom  also imposed the 32 kilometers per hour speed limit, with one borough seeing a 40%  drop in pedestrian fatalities afterwards. In Spain, raised crosswalks reduce driver  speeds by up to 10 kilometers per hour, and it keeps them at that pace if  they’re in an urban neighborhood.

Speed cameras also show promise,  with drivers generally staying below the speed limit while they’re  in the speed monitored zone. It would be great to implement these  changes in all U. S. neighborhoods.

But in lieu of that, it would  be helpful to at least focus on places that have the highest  rates of pedestrian deaths. Right now, low-income  neighborhoods and people of color are disproportionately affected by  pedestrian collisions and fatalities. A study in the American Journal of  Public Health examined how pedestrian fatalities varied across neighborhoods  affected by racist, redlining practices.

The worst ranked neighborhoods were  disproportionately black and immigrant, and saw 2.6 times as many pedestrian fatalities as predominantly white neighborhoods. This aligns with another study,  which showed that Black pedestrians are killed at 2.2 times the  rate of white pedestrians. Even Emergency Department  visits for pedestrian injuries are about two times higher among  Black and other non-White races.

Adding raised sidewalks in these  neighborhoods could help keep vulnerable people walking  to school and work safer. So the U. S. has a long way to go to  lower its pedestrian fatality rate.

It comes down to the choices of  individuals to drive cars with lower and sloped hoods, drive them slower,  and stay focused behind the wheel. And the infrastructure investments to  protect people in the highest risk areas. But if we make some very reasonable changes, we could turn a corner for pedestrian safety. [♪ OUTRO]