Roadkill: Florida Cities Dominate List of Most Lethal Pedestrian Zones
Categories: Broward
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| Flickr: gobayode |
The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership found:
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.The very same could be said of South Florida cities, where it seems rare for a day to pass without at least one report of a serious injury to a pedestrian.
Having lived in or visited the three cities ranked safest for pedestrians -- Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis -- I'm struck by how those three cities all have far more pedestrians than you see in Florida. You would think that the sheer volume of pedestrians would increase the odds of a fatality, but maybe the exact opposite is true: When there are fewer pedestrians, maybe that makes drivers less conscious of them.
Seattle, in particular, has a culture where one is made to feel guilty for driving. Pull into a crosswalk and you're liable to get about dozen versions of the stink eye from pedestrians. In Fort Lauderdale, a pedestrian is liable to be surprised when a driver observes the walker's right to the crosswalk.
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