To increase pedestrian safety, prioritize the people not in cars

Washington state is facing a road-safety crisis, a crisis felt most acutely by those of us who are most likely to travel outside of the protection of a vehicle. In 2021, there was a 26% increase in pedestrian and bicyclist deaths, and in the first half of 2022, road fatalities in Washington state increased by 31%. 

As a member of the Mobility Safety Advisory Group convened by the National Safety Council, I wanted to share some of the ideas that have come out of our discussions, recommendations that also align with what I hear from the nondrivers we organize with the Disability Mobility Initiative. 

First, the surest way to ensure people aren’t killed by vehicles is to reduce speed. The math is simple: An able-bodied adult only has a 20% chance of survival if hit by a car traveling 40 mph; at 20 mph, they have a 95% chance of survival. And with larger and heavier vehicles on the roads, safe speeds are even slower. Building infrastructure that only allows for slower speeds presents less risk when people inevitably make mistakes and moves us away from an individualized approach to a systemic one, where no matter what choices an individual makes, the outcomes will not be fatal. We need to challenge the unspoken consensus that our infrastructure must guarantee vehicle traffic flow at specific speeds and come up with improved metrics that value access and safety. 

Beyond reducing car speeds, if we’re really going to tackle traffic violence, we have to make walking, rolling, biking and riding transit the rational choice. We have made it so that in many communities driving is by far more convenient and safer, so the only people outside of vehicles are those without other options — disabled people like me, children and people who can’t afford to drive. 

Think of the school pickup paradox. Parents with cars choose to drive their children to school because it’s too dangerous for them to walk or bike. But the more parents who drive, the more dangerous it becomes for the kids whose parents can’t drive them. We’ve recreated this problem on a societal scale. That we call people outside of vehicles “vulnerable road users” even further stigmatizes us and centers drivers — and it makes everyone less safe. 

Tanisha Sepulveda is one of the advocates I work with at Disability Rights Washington. She lives in Seattle on a busy arterial street without curb ramps, and so in order to get to the nearest bus stop, Tanisha has to roll down the side of the street. 

“I’ll have people yell at me then tell me to get out of the road, sometimes with profanity,” Tanisha shares in a video. “I understand that it does not look safe to them. And it is not safe for anybody, but it is even less safe for me to be on the sidewalk when the curb cuts are not in place, or there are dips in the cement, or roots have lifted up the sidewalk, or gravel.”

Infrastructure improvements funded through last year’s Move Ahead Washington package could start to address these incomplete or inaccessible sidewalk networks and unsignalized or high-speed crossings. But the $1.3 billion allocated for walk/bike grants, safe routes to school and reconnecting communities divided by state highways is just a drop in the bucket compared to the need: to address pedestrian and bike deficiencies on roads maintained by the Department of Transportation will cost at least $5.7 billion, and that doesn’t take into account all the city and county maintained streets. 

Most critically, we need to tackle land use and housing affordability. It’s much easier to reduce car speeds, reduce vehicle miles traveled, and increase the percentage of trips made by walking, rolling, riding and transit if we stop building communities centered on automobility. We have a public health as well as a climate imperative to retrofit our communities and reprioritize people outside of cars. This starts by updating the Growth Management Act and our local comprehensive plans to incentivize more services within walking/rolling distance of every household and fewer services that are only accessible by freeway exits, six-lane roads and hostile surface parking lots.