TIL the number of pedestrians killed by drivers in the U.S. rose by 70 percent between 2010 and 2023

www.washingtonpost.com /business/interactive/2025/pedestrian-deaths-surge-road-safety/

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We’ve never had better technology to build safer cars and streets, and yet here we are. Pedestrian detection and all, installed on a vehicle that’s got a front grille as tall as a person.
I saw someone watching a movie on their phone as they drove the other day, also a probable factor.
- Investment in better infrastructure with no profit is a crime against capitalism.
- I met a woman who told me that during the pandemic lock downs she made money driving to legal weed states to spend tens of thousands of dollars on weed and flip it back in her state. She also told me that it was really boring so she'd frequently get above 100 while watching a movie on her phone on her dashboard. So that's who's out on the road with you
  
  Fucking.
  Wild.
  That kind of behaviour should just be an immediate and permanent revocation of the license, car towed on the spot. Fiddling with phone to get directions or dismiss a notification is one thing but actively watching entertainment?
  I have ADHD. It’s not super severe but it’s not great. I can drive 16 hrs (with appropriate breaks) without the radio. I will admit, I tend not to be super respectful of speed limits. But driving is enough stimulation for my scatterbrained self. Brain rot is a hell of a drug.
  
  People like this are why safe drivers’ insurance premiums are still so high. The safe drivers are subsidizing the dangerous ones. We’re being forced to pay more because the risk of being hit by a braindead watches-movies-while-doing-100 driver has increased.
  
  That’s absolutely wild. Before my state started selling legal weed, I would sometimes take trips to Massachusetts to buy enough to last me for months.
  The one thing I never did on those drives? Speed.
  I figured I was already technically breaking the law by carrying so much weed across non-legal states. To get pulled over for speeding could’ve led to massive trouble. Why put a target on my car (beyond already having an out-of-state license plate)?
  I went the other way - I meticulously watched for speed limit changes and set my cruise control accordingly, so it would be one fewer thing to worry about. When possible, I drove so there’d be a car some distance in front of me, but still within my view. That way, if there was a cop up ahead, I’d see the other car slow down first and it would give me a heads up.
  Adding more distractions and driving more erratically when you’re already breaking one law is a really stupid way to get caught.
  
  https://youtu.be/ttArr90NvWo
  
  @makeshiftreaper @CompactFlax I wish I had tens of thousands of dollars
- Yup. When you look around, everybody is on their fucking phone these days. No wonder they are killing people.
- You would think in a country that leads the world in the lawsuit industry someone would have come after Telcos for not installing safety measures on phones so people can't do stupid shit while driving.
  
  I don't want to be treated like a child. I just want people to be responsible for their own actions.

Vehicles are getting way too big on average, I mean the F150 is North America's best selling vehicle (*edit: I have since learned as of 2024 that spot actually belongs to the RAV4) since forever. It's a problem of misaligned incentives.
There's an exception carved out for large vehicles in the EPA guidelines that hold them to less stringent emissions standards which incentivizes building larger vehicles 1
Large cars are also incentivized by our crash safety rating system which only takes into account the mortality rate of those inside the car as apposed to average related fatalities. This means it will prioritize safety of those in the vehicle, which has led to our average fatalities increasing. 2
As an unintended side effect this also damages roads much faster because vehicle weight per axle determines the magnitude of the damage a vehicle does to the road. 3 anecdotally this makes me concerned for the additional weight that electric cars add.
Also as vehicles increase in weight the amount of microplastics put into the air as a by product of tire wear increase. 4
As cars increase in size (and therefore weight) the downsides are exponential.
- All that plus everyone is going 10 over on their phones. If operating a motor vehicle is so disinteresting to you, that you need to look at your phone every 10 seconds, DON'T DRIVE.
  
  Driving is simultaneously the most boring and most dangerous thing people do day-to-day. They want the driving to stop as soon as possible, so they speed. They don't want to be stuck with their own thoughts for even a single second, so they text.
  And there's no choice. It's not like they can get anywhere without a car in this shithole country.
  
  I didn't drive for many years because I always lived in cities with good public transport. When I drove again for the first time in 2021 I was shocked by how basically everyone went 10 over. I really feel this has gotten way worse in the last 20 years. Going 60 where the speedlimit is 50 seems to be the rule, not the exception nowadays.
- Thank you for putting these links together! I'm about to be in the market for a truck and have been researching current models, and noticed the trend of larger and larger vehicles for a few years now, and wondered why. It couldn't just be because of lifted truck culture. I'm about to just go to a junk yard and try to restore an old one.
  
  It sucks too because the old trucks with a low bed were so much better for actualy doing work if you care about your back at all.
  
  Honestly, I would love a lil Japanese kei truck in addition to my daily driver vehicle. They seem like the perfect lil truck for dump runs and transporting materials from Home Depot or what have you.

I got curious.. In Norway pedestrian fatalities fell by ~73% (from 22 to 6) from 2010 to 2024.
Source, a quick search on SSB.no.
- Ah! So Norwegians immigrating to the US are to blame! /s
  
  And it's all the bad drivers and reckless pedestrians too!

This is actually the real reason it’s unsafe to let your kids play outside. Getting run over by your neighbor Karen’s giant ass SUV.
- Every time they run over a kid, "I DIDN'T SEE HIM!"
  No shit you didn't see the kid, your vehicle is 5 feet tall and can't see a kid for 49 feet in front of it. Yet you made a conscious choice to buy the unsafe vehicle anyway
  
  They didn't see him because they're too busy staring at their phone.
  
  Yeah, but it's super safe for them specifically, as the people inside the 2 ton death cage!

And now the States has forced the EU to allow shit cars like that.
- Nobody forced them, EU politicians are Trump bootlickers, cowards afraid to stand up to a bully.
  
  There would certainly be consequences if they stood up to the US.

and its 100% from unnecessarily large cars
- You don't like the 'pedestrian mower' trucks, where the driver can't see anything that's less than 30 feet in front of them? Weird. /s
  
  bah. children are not the future. Ever talk to one? pretty ignorant.
- Average car size probably rose approximately 70% as well. I remember when Hummers were considered absurdly large, now they're not even the largest things on the road.
- In my experience, drivers are getting shittier by the week doing increasingly stupid and illegal maneuvers
- and car infrastructure
- Don't forget the rising costs of living, forcing more people onto the street, creating more pedestrian-vehicle collisions generally.
  And the widespread prevalence of stroads in the US, which are more or less the most dangerous environment for pedestrians humanity has ever invented.
  
  Stroads are an absolute fucking menace. And way too common.
  
  Don’t forget the rising costs of living, forcing more people onto the street, creating more pedestrian-vehicle collisions generally.
  I'm sorry, do you seriously think the rise in pedestrian collisions is attributable to the homeless? And do you think they literally live in the street or something?
  
  That sounds made up. Maybe if you could provide evidence of an equivalent rise in homelessness. Even then, more homeless doesn't mean more people are wandering into the street.
  
  Thanks for the laugh 😆
- Not even 1% from phones?
  
  Phones cause more accidents but mortality rate rose sharply with the increased size of vehicles.

I wonder if it's all of the touch screens? I got in a rideshare vehicle the other day and the driver had fucking youtube on
- Trucks and SUVs have also gotten bigger with flatter fronts. People used to go onto the hood in a collision, now they go under the vehicle
  
  I think that's been true for a long time though

The share of pedestrians increased over that period, which may have had something to do with it. I suspect cell phone use while driving makes up a large part as well.
- I agree with you on cell phone use being a contributor. I'm not convinced that pedestrian numbers contribute at all to the increase. I'm not really even convinced that pedestrian numbers have increased at all. Population, yes, has increased but given how growingly hostile most of the US is to pedestrian traffic, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that real pedestrian numbers have decreased.
  
  Cost of living in that time has gone up substantially nation wide. In my city (Albuquerque) there are easily twice as many people on the street today as 15 years ago. This report says it's gone up %40 in just the last 2 years alone.
- I live in a small town and when I'm walking around it seems as though half of the vehicles that drive by are in their phones
  
  How is that legal in the US?
- Yes. And while walking.
  Lack of focus all around.
- If you walk into the knife, someone is running around with, then its your fault?
  
  It's more like walking on train tracks and being surprised when you are hit by a train.

Damn, 23 posts in 4 hours. You sure are posting fast.
- They have to. They're driving.

That number is sure to drop soon, as clankers run everyone over instead.
- what is a clanker
  
  https://youtu.be/CzHIWzkkHNQ
  
  Humorous 'slur' for a robot or artificial intelligence, in this case self-driving cars. Originally from Star Wars

Who would've thought that market incentives and regulatory capture would lead to this?
/s

Expand public transportation towards the goal of banning personal cars nothing but giant space hoarding, planet destroying death machines.
- Until everyone outside city limits has transportation to get to or to do work, it’s not a viable option.
  
  Yeah, I’m a big public transport supporter, I never owned a car and so forth, but the transport options outside of city limits are always crap. I haven’t found a good solution yet, and definitely never saw one implemented.
  
  Then start with the cities. Make them more human, more livable. They have the largest population and would have the most impact, anyway.
  Nothing has to be a blanket solution and aiming for a goal doesn't mean the goal is fixed or has to be reached immediately.
  
  Force employers to pay transportation costs and you'll see commute lengths plummet.
  
  You have to begin somewhere. Doing nothing is the "not a viable option".
  
  quote "expand towards the goal"
  
  No, that's ass-backwards. You have to stop catering to drivers first in order to incite them to support building the transit. Politically, it does not, can not, and never will work the other way around.
  Your argument is nothing more than disingenuous support for the car-dependent status quo.

Seeing the drivers around me, I’d believe it. Anytime I go for a walk or run I almost die. People are willing to hit another human being.

My bad. 😬

Now do 1810 thru 1961!

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