Why pedestrian deaths in the US are at a 40-year high

How many deaths does it take to get the government to take a crisis seriously?

That’s the question raised by the Governors Highway Safety Association’s latest preliminary report on pedestrian deaths in 2022. The annual overview of state data on pedestrian fatalities helps the public and policymakers get a better understanding of the overall picture of road safety in the US.

This year’s report makes clear how dangerous it is to walk in America: The GHSA projects that 7,508 people were killed while walking in 2022, the most pedestrians killed since 1981, when 7,837 pedestrians were killed.

The roads were already getting deadlier for pedestrians before 2020, but the pandemic turbocharged the trend. In 2021, 7,624 pedestrians were killed in the United States, a 13 percent increase from the year before, when 6,721 pedestrians were killed. Between 2010 and 2021, the new GHSA report says, pedestrian fatalities increased 77 percent.