Dangerous by Design 2026 shows Congress is failing on safety

Last week, Smart Growth America released its 2026 edition of Dangerous by Design. This cornerstone report investigates the skyrocketing pedestrian safety crisis across the U.S. and outlines actions that must be taken if the country hopes to ever stop the crisis. Dangerous by Design makes clear that the current transportation system is failing. With thousands of lives at stake, Congress cannot afford to continue the status quo embodied in the BUILD Act.

Policymakers continue to fund oversized programs that encourage practitioners to build roads using outdated standards that kill more people. The BUILD America 250 Act protects these programs by prioritizing highway expansion and preserving harmful regulations. Decision makers in Washington, DC, continue to stand in the way of communities trying to help residents reach their daily needs by walking, biking, or taking transit. We need a different approach, and reauthorization is an opportunity to do so.

Although federal transportation officials claim progress in roadway safety, Dangerous by Design shows otherwise. In 2024, 7,080 people were struck and killed while walking, the latest in a string of historically deadly years since 2009. The slight 3.9 percent decrease in pedestrian fatalities, celebrated by the U.S. Department of Transportation, doesn’t even return the country to pre-Covid-19 levels. Headlines may reassure policymakers, but residents in places like Memphis and Albuquerque, where fatality rates continue to climb, are unlikely to find those celebrations warranted.

Other trends highlighted in Dangerous by Design confirm that what we’re seeing is more of the same, including higher rates of fatalities on state-owned roads and in urban areas, people of color bearing a disproportionate number of the total pedestrian fatalities, and a frustratingly similar list of the most dangerous metro areas and states across the country.

The current reauthorization process is a clear opportunity to address this crisis. Congress should use it to overhaul the programs that perpetuate this deadly system and hold accountable the agencies and practitioners who refuse to adopt proven safety practices. This is the chance to invest in what works by directing more resources to practitioners who can deploy proven countermeasures and to communities that are ready to repair decades of harmful transportation decisions. Instead, the BUILD America 250 Act shows complacency in the face of an increasing number of deaths that occur year over year. As a result, those who support it will be complicit in the deaths of the estimated 96,615 people who will be killed while walking between now and 2042.

Much of this year’s Dangerous by Design report mirrors its previous nine editions, demonstrating how little effort has been put into systematically combating pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. This year’s report adds to the narrative by putting the U.S.’s failure in a global context.

When compared to 34 global peers, the U.S. is on a starkly different trajectory, killing over 60,000 people in the last decade, while other nations drastically reduced their roadway fatality rates. In fact, had the U.S. stayed in step with these peers, it would see a rate of 8.73 fatalities per 100,000 people compared to its current rate of 11.7 fatalities per 100,000.

This didn’t happen by accident. Federal leaders spent decades failing to reform transportation programs, adopt proven safety practices, or hold road designers and agencies accountable for the consequences of their decisions.

Pedestrian safety cannot continue to be treated as an add-on to the federal transportation program. The street design changes proven to save the lives of people walking or biking should not be relegated to grant programs that are barely visible in the overall budget. Even if the federal government continues accepting the human cost of its half-hearted efforts to improve pedestrian safety, Smart Growth America hopes that its partners and network will use the release of Dangerous by Design 2026 to make it clear that we do not.