Three years after being convicted of vehicular homicide for crossing the street with her young son, Raquel Nelson today finally was freed of the looming threat of three years in jail. The metro Atlanta mom made national headlines in 2011 when a Cobb County jury found her guilty of killing her four-year-old because she chose to cross a five-lane road from a bus stop to her apartment, rather than walk an additional two-thirds of a mile to cross at the nearest signal. The judge at the time offered her an option for a new trial, which she took, along with a pro bono offer from more experienced counsel.

Few single actions have helped advance the cause of walkable neighborhoods more than the launch of WalkScore.com a few years ago. In a simple and elegant formulation, Walk Score summed up what it meant to be “walkable” and put a value on it. Since then, every real estate web site worth visiting has added it [...]

Members of Congress have spent the last six weeks negotiating a transportation bill in conference committee, trying to beat the clock on the current extension set to expire June 30. As part of those negotiations, some members are attempting to strip the bill of key policies that would create safer streets for pedestrians. With more than 50,000 pedestrians killed between 2001 and 2010, Transportation for America is today releasing new data presenting a breakdown of fatalities by Congressional district.

Editor’s note: This guest post by Barbara McCann is cross-posted from the National Complete Streets Coalition. We’re re-running this here because we’ve previously highlighted the work of Dr. Scott Crawford in Jackson, Miss. to bring attention to the danger posed to residents by streets that aren’t safe for everyone that needs to use them. Sadly, that turned out [...]

You may not have known it — it’s not the most publicized special day on the books — but today is National Walking Day. Some of you may have traded part or all of your drive or transit trip today for a walk to work. But for many, every day is “walking day,” and it [...]

A new academic study looking at the numbers of pedestrians killed while wearing headphones has been highly successful at winning credulous news coverage and shifting blame to the victims, but by focusing on a tiny sliver of fatalities it does more to obscure the true causes than explain what is happening. It examines a share of pedestrian fatalities so small as to be almost statistically insignificant when compared to the problem of pedestrian deaths writ large.

In a story far too similar to Raquel Nelson‘s ordeal, a boy was struck and killed while crossing a 5-lane arterial highway in metro Atlanta with his stepfather on New Year’s Day. Just like the incident that claimed the life of A.J Nelson, the child was halfway across a busy street with a parent and [...]

UPDATE below. More than 5,200 of you signed our petition to push for freedom for the Atlanta mother who was charged in her son’s death when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street in front of their apartment complex. Raquel Nelson is due back in court next week, but we wanted [...]

After putting out the call far and wide for pictures of streets designed for speeding traffic at the expense of safe travel by people on foot or bike, we’ve been getting some great — and by great, we mean frightening and terrible — photos of inconvenient, poorly-planned, dangerous and downright hostile conditions for pedestrians. Here [...]

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to sign complete streets legislation is a step forward for pedestrian safety, though a Times report out of Orlando yesterday illustrates how much further we have to go. The status-quo for most people on foot or on bike around the country is woefully unsafe and insufficient, though perhaps nowhere more so than in Florida.