How dangerous is your city for pedestrians? A new study by Transportation for America analyzes metro areas with a population of 100,000 or more and estimates the likelihood that pedestrians will be killed in traffic accidents within each city. In the past decade, more than 43,000 Americans have been killed when crossing a street or walking along a road. To put that in perspective, this is the equivalent of a jumbo passenger jet going down every month. Even scarier? The top ten most dangerous cities to walk in, according to the report, are all in the South.
The most dangerous metropolitan areas in the U.S. for walking in 2007-2008 were Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville, Memphis, Raleigh, Louisville, Houston, Birmingham, and Atlanta. Orlando tops the list because of its high pedestrian fatality rate of 2.9 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents, despite a very low proportion of residents walking to work, only 1.3 percent. In other words, the few people who do walk in Orlando face a relatively high risk of being killed by traffic.
Find your city’s danger ranking here.
