Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Safety

Expanding the Mission of “Safe Routes to School” as Kids Return to Class

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 26, 2014 | 11 Comments

It’s hard to believe summer is almost over. In many places, the weather was so mild it seems like it never quite started. But kids are already going back to school. While the weather has been cool, temperatures have reached a boiling point on many of our nation’s streets. In many communities, violence is very much […]

America’s Progress on Street Safety Is Pathetic

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 20, 2014 | 34 Comments

A new report from the International Transport Forum shows America is only falling farther behind all of its peer nations on street safety [PDF]. The traffic fatality rate in the United States (10.7 per 100,000 people) is nearly four times higher than in the United Kingdom (2.8 per 100,000) and close to double that of […]

What Can an Algorithm Tell Us About How People Perceive Streets?

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 8, 2014 | 6 Comments

What makes people feel that a street is safe, and what do those perceptions tell us about different streets? A group of researchers at MIT have developed a formula designed to approximate people’s subjective reactions to the way streets look. They hope it will help chart shifts in the quality of city environments over time and […]

“Safe Routes” Goes Global With the Model School Zone Project

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 31, 2014 | No Comments

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh. To get to Seoul Gumsan Elementary School in South Korea, students have to cross a heavily trafficked road with a blind curve. Between 2009 and 2010, 89 children were injured and one killed in 86 traffic […]

Getting Rural Kids Walking and Biking: A Case Study From Northeast Iowa

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 22, 2014 | No Comments

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh. Nationally, more than 14,000 schools have taken part in Safe Routes to School programs. Though dedicated federal funding was stripped out in the current transportation law, SRTS funds have helped improve sidewalks, crosswalks, bike […]

What’s the Best Way to Make Biking Mainstream in a Car-Centric City?

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 16, 2014 | 9 Comments

How can you turn a car-dependent city into a place where most people feel safe cycling for transportation? Researchers in Auckland, New Zealand, created a predictive model to assess how different policies affect cycling rates over several years. In a paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives [PDF], they concluded that a combination of protected […]

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