This is a shocking report from Smart Growth America on traffic fatalities in the US. Since 2010, the number of pedestrians struck and killed has increased by almost 75%. As of 2022, this number sat at just over 7,500 fatalities per year:

Here are also the top 20 most deadly metro areas:

Not surprisingly, these hot spots tend to be in the south, as opposed to in older northern cities. And that's because these tend to be car-oriented places. As the name of the report suggests, they are "dangerous by design." If you optimize for cars, it means you're making trade-offs in other places.

Charts: Smart Growth America

The US Department of Transportation has just finalized a new vehicle safety standard that will require all light-duty vehicles to be equipped with a more advanced form of automatic emergency braking (AEB) by 2029. (Light-duty vehicle = pretty much all passenger vehicles, including SUVs and trucks.)

Now, most light-duty vehicles on the road today already have some form of emergency braking. What's noteworthy about this ruling is that it requires a more robust version. Some might say one that works. Specifically, it will need to work at much higher speeds and at night.

Most of the AEB systems in operation today don't really work at night -- basically at all -- and many have shown to be ineffective when it comes to stopping for humans.

This new standard will require vehicles to automatically brake at up to 90 mph when a possible collision with a car is detected and up to 45 mph when a possible collision with a pedestrian is detected.

This seems like a very good thing, especially given the persistent problem we are having with cars killing too many people. But how do we do it?

From what I have read, this new standard will be pretty challenging to meet without the use of long-range LiDAR, especially since night vision is a requirement. I find this interesting because, even though autonomy is taking a lot longer to arrive than most people anticipated, there's still meaningful progress being made.

Here's to hoping it saves a lot of lives.

Here's some recent data, via CityLab, suggesting that Americans are walking less and driving less, but killing more people when they do drive around. (The report is based on data from 2019 to 2022.)

My first reaction to these high-level findings is that they seem to make sense. This time period was the pandemic. And people were locked away at home (though I used to take some seriously long walks around downtown during this dark time).

So I don't know, I'm not sure we can conclude that walking less is truly a structural phenomenon. Similarly, I'm not sure that we can immediately conclude that cars are becoming increasingly more dangerous.

According to Wikipedia, deaths per capita, deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled, and total deaths, have all been generally declining in the US since the 1960s.

However, I do wonder if there's some sort of correlation between people walking less and car-related fatalities. The most dangerous streets, in my mind, are often the ones that don't have a lot of pedestrians.

That's why, broadly speaking, it feels safer walking around Manhattan than it does Los Angeles. So maybe less people walking is enough to trigger an increase in pedestrian fatalities.