Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Traffic fatalities

CDC: America Falling Behind Other Nations on Traffic Safety

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 7, 2016 | 9 Comments

How is the U.S. doing on traffic safety? To hear a lot of people tell it, we’re making great strides. President Obama recently referred to the reduction in American traffic deaths as a success story of sorts, contrasting it with the rise in gun deaths. But while traffic fatalities in America are indeed trending downward, […]

How to Counter the Victim-Blaming Impulse After a Traffic Crash

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 27, 2016 | 8 Comments

When a driver strikes someone walking or biking, the tendency to blame the victim runs deep. Ask Raquel Nelson, who lost her young son to a hit-and-run driver, then got convicted for vehicular homicide, even though she was just trying to walk across the street with her children from a bus stop to her home. Or […]

More Driving, More People Dying on America’s Streets

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 9, 2016 | 18 Comments

On Friday, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration released new data [PDF] showing that traffic deaths are up. Up quite a bit. During the first nine months of 2015, 26,000 Americans were killed in traffic collisions — a 9.3 percent increase over the same period in 2014. According to Autoblog, that would work out to the highest one-year percentage […]

Texas DOT Isn’t Learning From Its Horrific Road Fatalities Calendar

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 8, 2016 | 25 Comments

This calendar is published by the Texas Department of Transportation as part of its traffic safety efforts. It shows how many fatal collisions and traffic deaths happened every day of the year. On average, someone is killed every two and a half hours on Texas streets, and someone is injured every two minutes, according to TxDOT [PDF]. Texas hasn’t had a day […]

Every Traffic Fatality in the U.S. — Mapped

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 6, 2015 | 4 Comments

What is the most dangerous street in your region? Which one most needs improvements to protect cyclists? Where do drunk drivers do the most damage? Thanks to a new tool from New York City data scientist Max Galka, you can get a pretty good sense with a few clicks. Galka recently completed a map of every traffic […]