Dangerous By Design: 10 Metro Areas With Highest Share of Pedestrian Fatalities
| Dangerous By Design: Full Rankings and Tables | ||
| Table 1: | Most Dangerous Metro Areas (Over 1 Million in Population) | |
| Table 2: | Top 10 Metros with Highest Share of Pedestrian Fatalities | |
| Table 3: | Highest Avg. Fatalities per 100k People Age 65 and Older (by State) | |
| Table 4: | Metros > 1m With Highest Yearly Spending on Pedestrians | |
| Table 5: | State Pedestrian Fatalities & Federal Spending on Walking & Biking | |
| Appendix C: | All 360 Metros with Pedestrian Danger Index Grouped by State | |
| Appendix A: | Methodology | |
The PDI was developed to allow a fair comparison of metro areas according to their risk to pedestrians, relative to how much an ordinary person walks in that metro area. However, in some communities, even those not rated as the most “dangerous” according to the PDI, pedestrian deaths represent an unusually high portion of all traffic deaths. Table 2 lists the metro areas with the highest percentage of pedestrian deaths, not controlling for the number of walkers.
Pedestrians make up a very high percentage of all traffic deaths in New York. The metropolitan area, with an average 316 annual pedestrian deaths in 2007 and 2008, has the highest absolute number of pedestrian deaths of any metropolitan area in the U.S. Further, the percent of traffic deaths that were pedestrians in New York is nearly three times the national average. In communities with such a high portion of pedestrian deaths, pedestrian safety merits proportional public safety attention.
However, with by far the highest portion of commuters walking to work of any large metropolitan area, the relative risk to pedestrians in the New York metro area is the fourth lowest in the country. Perhaps more troubling are the metro areas with both a high portion of pedestrian traffic deaths and a low percentage of residents walking to work — Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. These are places where pedestrians are truly at risk of being killed while walking, a risk that is captured by the PDI and reflected in that ranking.
<– Back to Dangerous By Design home
Table 2: 10 Metro areas (over 1 million residents) with highest share of pedestrian fatalities |
|||||
| Rank | Metropolitan Area | Number of Pedestrian Fatalities (2007) |
Number of Pedestrian Fatalities (2008) |
Percent of Workers Walking to Work (2000) |
Percent of Traffic Deaths that Were Pedestrians |
| 1 | New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA | 316 | 317 | 6.0% | 31.1% |
| 2 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 64 | 72 | 3.9% | 27.7% |
| 3 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA | 247 | 244 | 2.7% | 26.9% |
| 4 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL | 178 | 151 | 1.7% | 22.5% |
| 5 | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 98 | 94 | 1.7% | 22.4% |
| 6 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 24 | 23 | 1.8% | 22.2% |
| 7 | Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI | 25 | 18 | 2.9% | 22.1% |
| 8 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 106 | 80 | 3.0% | 21.4% |
| 9 | Denver-Aurora, CO | 41 | 38 | 2.1% | 20.4% |
| 9 | San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA | 50 | 63 | 3.4% | 20.4% |
