On April 5, 2022, a speeding pickup truck struck a 35-year-old man while he was walking his dog in Houston, making him one of 117 pedestrians killed in that city last year…All told, motor vehicles killed more than 7,500 people while they were walking to church, a grocery store, a bus stop or elsewhere in the U.S. last year, according to a June analysis by the Governors Highway Safety Association.
Pedestrian safety — or the lack thereof — is tied to larger economic and social forces. “There’s a perfect correlation between poverty and danger,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, a Smart Growth America project. A report SGA issued last year found that those living in the lowest-income census tracts are 3.3 times more likely to die in a roadway collision than those living in the highest-income areas. Low-income neighborhoods experience more than 30% of all pedestrian deaths, according to the 2022 SGA report. Black or African American pedestrians are twice as likely to be killed as White pedestrians.
