Pedestrian Safety

Key Facts

• Each year, approximately 630 child pedestrian fatalities occur.
• Children sustain more than 39,000 nonfatal pedestrian injuries each year.
• Approximately 70 percent of pedestrian deaths are motor vehicle-related.
• Between 1995 and 2005, the number of child pedestrian fatalities decreased by 51 percent.
• Children under 10 years of age are unable to correctly gauge the speed of vehicles putting them at greater risk for injury and death.

When and Where

• Other than in the street, driveways, parking lots and on sidewalks are where young children ages 0-2 years suffer the highest number of injuries as pedestrians.
• 83 percent of child pedestrian deaths occur at non-intersection locations.
  1 in 4 child pedestrian deaths occur between 6 - 9p.m.
• On average, 12 children die each year in school bus-related crashes.

Who

• Males sustain almost two-thirds of all child pedestrian deaths.
• Black children have a pedestrian injury death rate almost twice that of white children.
• 4 out of 5 driveway-related incidents occur to children ages 4 and under.
• Parents of children who suffer from a pedestrian-related injury are three times less likely to practice other preventive behaviors and are more likely to be single parents, young mothers or both.

Proven Interventions

• Policies that increase the number of people walking and bicycling have shown to be an effective method
  for improving the safety of people walking and bicycling.

Laws and Regulations

• In 2005, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-
  LU) was signed into law. The SAFETEA-LU includes the establishment of Safe Routes to School, a
  program with the goal of making it safer for children to walk or bike to school. The Safe Routes to School
  program aims to:
  
  1. Fix or improve sidewalks
  2. Execute traffic calming and speed reduction measures
  3. Improve pedestrian and bicycle crossings
  4. Conduct public education campaigns to encourage walking and biking to school.
  State and local laws created to protect child pedestrians include:
• Lower speed limits in residential areas
• Protection of pedestrians in crosswalks
• Providing pedestrian walkways
• Prohibition of vehicles from passing school buses while loading and unloading passengers
• Providing crossing guards and requiring pedestrians to not cross streets at locations other than designated crosswalks.