Just because you are walking to your destination does not mean you can be less aware of danger. The death toll of pedestrians killed in traffic crashes is projected to spike about 10% in 2015 compared with 2014. If the estimate proves to be accurate, it will be the largest annual increase ever.
That is the main finding of a new report released today by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), a nonprofit organization representing state highway safety offices.
“We are projecting the largest year-to-year increase in pedestrian fatalities since national records have been kept, and therefore we are quite alarmed,” Richard Retting, co-author of the report, said in a statement, referring to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System established in 1975.
Retting wrote the report with Dr. Heather Rothenberg, both of Sam Schwartz Consulting.
The association called the annual Spotlight on Highway Safety Report the first nationwide looks at 2015 pedestrian fatality trends, which is based on preliminary data supplied by the states and the District of Columbia for the first six months of the year.
“Pedestrian safety is clearly a growing problem across the country,” Retting added, stressing the importance of understanding the crash data so states and local governments “can apply the right mix of engineering, education and enforcement to counteract this troubling trend.”