While overall traffic fatalities fell last year by a “record” amount, pedestrian fatalities have shown little improvement. And what is the explanation for this? According to the Governor’s Highway Safety Assoc., it is all Michelle Obama’s fault:
First lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to get people to exercise outdoors might be a factor in an increase in the number of pedestrian deaths during the first half of last year, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. GHSA executive director Barbara Harsha said her organization doesn’t know why there were more deaths in the first six months of 2010 than in 2009, but the increase is notable because overall traffic fatalities went down 8 percent during this period, and the increase ends four straight years of steady declines in pedestrian deaths. But the “get moving” movement, led by Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to eliminate childhood obesity, could be to blame, Harsha told The Washington Examiner.
The GHSA report is depressing reading. We all know why streets have become more dangerous for pedestrians, but the engineering profession refuses to own up to its responsibility. Instead, the GHSA report professes ignorance as to the causes, and the organization’s spokeswoman blames the First Lady instead.
This recalls Upton Sinclair’s famous principle: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As long as the traffic engineering profession gets paid to build bigger and faster highways, the non-motorized users will suffer the consequences.
Pedestrian Fatalities 1999-2009
If pedestrian safety is not improving, I’d like to speculate on a culprit: the pedestrian beg button, technically known as a pedestrian-actuated signal.
Instead of automatically signaling pedestrians to cross as the traffic lights change, intersections with beg buttons require the pedestrian to press the button and wait until the next phase before they get the signal to cross. In other words pedestrians have to press the button to beg the man to let them cross.
What this means is that a lot of times pedestrians will show up at the wrong time, and it will be completely safe for them to cross but because they didn’t show up in time to actuate the signal, they have to wait a whole cycle to cross. Reasonably, most people cross anyway against the signal.
The actuated signal undeniably makes things more convenient for cars, but at the cost of pedestrian safety.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Molly Duggan, John R. Bennett and Ted Lott, Streetsblog Network. Streetsblog Network said: Michelle Obama makes a lame scapegoat for bad engineering http://bit.ly/eEkDjr via Systemic Failure [...]
gettingaroundmpls, the pedestrian beg button
LOL I hope you don’t mind that I borrow that.
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I don’t know if you seen this comment from the Chairman of GHSA and head of Maryland Safety Office:
“Nationally, pedestrian fatalities account for about 12 percent [in Maryland that's over 20%] of overall traffic deaths, a small but significant portion. Given that we have made so much progress in this area, GHSA is concerned to see this reversal. One factor may be the increased distractions for both pedestrians and drivers. !>Anyone who travels in a busy city has seen countless pedestrians engrossed in conversation or listening to music while crossing a busy street.pedestrians need to focus on walking safely<! – without distractions. "
With such pro pedestrian values it makes you wounder why Maryland has the 4th highest pedestrian fatality rate.
[/sarcasm]