Pedestrian traffic deaths rise in Indiana despite national drop
Why it matters: Cities are trying to reduce pedestrian deaths — so many of which are utterly avoidable — through "Vision Zero" programs, lower speed limits, "traffic calming" road designs and more.
Driving the news: 3,304 pedestrians were killed on roads nationwide between January and June 2024, per a new Governors Highway Safety Association preliminary report.
That's 88 fewer deaths than during the same period in 2023, but 1,072 more than during the same period in 2014.
Stunning stat: "Between the first half of 2014 and 2024, pedestrian deaths have risen at a rate almost seven times faster than population growth," the report finds.
Zoom in: There were 49 deaths in Indiana in the first half of last year, according to the report.
That's 10 more than the same period in 2023 — a 26% increase.
Indy Pedestrian Safety Crisis, a group that tracks local pedestrian deaths, injuries and other safety incidents, recorded 41 deaths in the city last year.
State of play: The Indianapolis City-County Council established a Vision Zero Task Force last year with the goal of "eliminating all fatal and serious injury crashes on city streets by 2035."
It is tasked with creating and adopting an action plan by July 1.
The latest: During a City-County Council meeting last month, task force members discussed recent traffic calming projects that may serve as models for future Vision Zero work — such as the makeover of a section of College Avenue and the Michigan Street road diet.
At that meeting, a row of chairs in the audience was left empty and labeled with the names of several pedestrians killed in the last year.
Jakob Morales, the advocacy committee chair for Bike Indianapolis, told Fox 59 he feels his group's concerns are being taken seriously but that they'll continue to monitor the city's progress.
"People will continue to be killed," he said, "so we need to act urgently."
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Hamilton Spectator
18-07-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
The road ahead for active transportation in Whitehorse
'There's no safe way out of the subdivision,' Jenna Frerot said at the top of Rainbow Road in Crestview. The sidewalk ends at the top of the road, which overlooks the cars and trucks driving along the Alaska Highway. Frerot said that when she takes her children to school in a trailer hitched to her bicycle, she rides on the lane of the winding road. 'When it's nice, not winter time, they want to ride on their own,' she said. She said it makes her nervous. 'My five-year-old goes in front. The three-year-old goes behind her, and I ride half in the middle of the road because just trying to be the guardrail for the two of them.' Frerot appeared before city council in June, with other parents living in Crestview, requesting that a paved connector trail be built to connect the neighbourhood to a paved trail that runs down to Wann Road. 'It's only roughly 640-meter long trail connector we're asking for that would help make commuting safe and accessible for everyone in our subdivision,' she told councillors. She also asked for speed reduction on the roads in the neighbourhood. Frerot's concerns come at a time when the city is evaluating its own transit network as part of developing its Vision Zero policy. The policy comes out of goals laid out in the city's transportation master plan, adopted in 2024, and it endeavours to see no fatalities or serious injuries on Whitehorse's transportation network by 2040. The policy is set to be accompanied by a safe mobility action plan, which is also in development. Safe mobility refers to improving safety for all travellers of all demographics and on all networks, including sidewalks and bike paths, said Brian Patterson, a consultant on the city's Vision Zero strategy. Speaking to attendees at a June 25 webinar, Patterson said that on average, 1.4 collisions are reported to police every day, 6.7 people are killed or injured (mildly or seriously) every month, and two people are killed per year on Whitehorse streets. 'That's two people too many,' said Patterson. 'No deaths are acceptable on our roads.' Rob Dickson is the manager of engineering services for the city. He told the News that based on data accessed through the territorial department of motor vehicles, there were 5,145 collisions in Whitehorse from 2015 to 2024. He said 84 per cent of those collisions resulted in property damage only, with no injuries: 16 per cent resulted in injuries, and 0.4 per cent collisions resulted in a fatality. It works out to between one to two fatalities annually. Dickson also said some of those collisions involved a vulnerable road user, or someone who was not in a car. However, many did involve individuals in cars, he said, including people who had left the road. A large proportion of these fatalities happen on the highway where people are travelling at higher speeds, said Dickson. According to Patterson, most fatalities in Whitehorse occurred between the hours of 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. The city has seen 20 fatalities on the roads over the past ten years. 774 collisions resulted in injuries, minor or serious, over the same time frame. A larger proportion, 40 per cent, of collisions resulting in injury or death happened between October and January, when light is low and road conditions are poor, he said. Patterson said collisions where drivers leave the road or strike a fixed object were the most common fatal collision types 'These are more common on rural roads or highways, where you have a shoulder and perhaps a vehicle runs off road in that shoulder area and might run into an object such as a lamp pole, or a fence,' said Patterson. The top four contributing factors to collisions which killed or hurt people were inattentive or distracted driving, failing to yield right-of-way, drinking, or driving too fast. Twenty per cent of fatal collisions involved a driver under the influence of alcohol, he said. In the data collected from 2015 to 2024, 60 pedestrians were involved in collisions that resulted in death or injury, said Patterson. There were three pedestrian fatalities over the past ten years, he said. The most frequent occurrence of collisions involving pedestrians were pedestrians crossing at marked crosswalks with no traffic signal. For cyclists, there were 23 collisions involving injury or death: One was fatal. The most frequent occurrence of collisions where cyclists were injured or killed was when vehicles were turning right. Patterson said the majority of collisions overall occurred on Fourth and Second Avenues within downtown, as well as Two Mile Hill and the Mountainview Drive/Copper Road/Quartz Road corridor. To create a Whitehorse where no one dies or is seriously injured on the city's roadways, Patterson said it's necessary to follow a 'safe system approach.' That means improving the safety of the transportation system itself and eliminating predictable and preventable serious injuries and fatalities, he said. There are six elements to the framework of safe systems: safe speeds, safe land-use planning, safe road users, safe vehicles, safe road design, and post-crash care. 'The approach means, we are understanding that humans make mistakes, we need to recognize that and design so that when mistakes do occur, that they aren't catastrophic in their impacts,' he said. Meghan Winters is a professor at the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She leads the Cities Health and Active Transportation Research Lab, which looks into how city infrastructure and policy affects population health and health equity. Winters noted that despite having visited Whitehorse a couple of times, she isn't deeply familiar with the specifics of active transportation in the Yukon capital. Winters said its important not to minimize the problem despite a relatively small number of cyclists being killed on roads. 'That's a person whose life is lost. Fatality is one thing,' she said. 'There are many incidents that happen, crashes and collisions that happen, as well as falls and near misses that happen that impede, that create perceptions around the safety of cycling and then limit people from cycling,' she said. 'The safest infrastructure for cycling or walking or any other active transportation mode is something that separates them from motor vehicle traffic.' Safety is created through design and infrastructure, said Winters, not just through reducing speed limits. These considerations come as the city is working on its draft zoning bylaw, wherein they propose reducing parking minimums (the minimum amount of parking that must be provided for a given use, like housing or commercial). Some of the reasons cited for the move is to encourage more sustainable transportation and support alternative modes of getting around. The precursor to the draft zoning bylaw is the official community plan. There's a number of transportation goals in that plan: the primary goal being an accessible, safe, equitable and sustainable transportation network. While not Whitehorse specific, the Yukon government offers rebates for e-bikes. But for Jenna Frerot in Crestview, it's all for naught if the city doesn't improve the infrastructure people would be using to get around on foot or bike. 'If you build it, they will come, right? You can't ask people to actively commute downtown with no safe cross, like no safe trail, no plowed trail, right?' The transportation master plan has a long list of transportation infrastructure projects for the near, medium and long-term. They target a number of user groups, with everything from a new bridge crossing the Yukon River to a footbridge connecting downtown and the hospital. There are also significant number of projects targeting active transportation across town. More recently, the city announced plans to develop an active transportation network connecting Whistle Bend and downtown as well. It's expecting to cost around $12.5 million. A funding application has been put through for federal funds to build the trail, Dickson said. The city is still awaiting approval on that application. There is also the project for the Alaska Highway Multi-Use Trail. The trail, which is set to be built by the Yukon government, will run along the Alaska Highway between the North Klondike to the Carcross Cutoff. A final plan for that project should be complete by the end of July 2025, according to Adam Luciano, the manager of planning and programming at the transportation engineering branch for the Yukon government. The plan will map out what the trail will look like, as well as which parts will be built first, Luciano told the News on June 19. Priority trail sections have been identified, he said. Each piece of trail will have to be designed and constructed in turn, he said. 'The next piece that we're working on right now is a section of trail from Two Mile Hill over towards the Kopper King,' said Luciano. 'That has been submitted for environmental assessment.' The plan essentially expands the existing trail network outwards: picking it up from Two Mile Hill and start extending that to Porter Creek, he said. Luciano said that most of the feedback received on the trail through surveys was positive, but some people questioned the logic for building the trail instead of a different highway project. 'Our vision for the Alaska Highway through Whitehorse is really, is that it needs to offer travel options for all modes. It's not just a highway that, you know, moves things through the city,' Luciano said. 'It's really an important part of the city's transportation network for local people, connecting neighbourhoods,' he said. 'Putting a trail in and making sure that people have space, safe spaces to walk and cycle are a key part of you know, providing for the growth of the city going forward.' Dickson said the demand for active transportation infrastructure in the city is high. The city previously used data collected from bike-trip-sharing app Strava to track active transportation throughout Whitehorse. However, the city has started to install counters throughout town, including on bike trails, to see how many people in the city are walking and biking. The city wants to build up a database of the volume of traffic seen on the corridors, as it effects design and other parts of infrastructure, said Dickson. For instance, he said, the data collected at Hamilton Boulevard will help inform design decisions with the city's HART project. There are barriers to building infrastructure for active transportation, said Dickson. 'We have been working on active transportation improvements, probably since the late 90s, maybe even earlier in the 90s,' he said. 'And a lot of the projects that were sort of more easily implemented, have been implemented.' What remains now is the projects that are more complex to implement. For example, Dickson said, to put bike lanes on Second Avenue, there would have to be a reduction in space for cars. That would lead to congestion and traffic, he said. 'So that is a trade off, and being able to use the waterfront pathway isn't a huge detour, right, for cyclists,' Dickson said, adding it is also much safer for cyclists to be on a separated bike path. Whitehorse is also a vast city — spanning 414 square kilometres, according to Statistics Canada. The distances to connect subdivisions is long, Dickson said, and the funding required to connect the trail networks would be significant. Some roads aren't wide enough to accommodate an additional five meters to contain a separate bike path on each side, said Dickson. Furthermore, because of the grade of the road, a huge amount of construction and disturbance is required to build up an accessible trail. 'These are just examples, I guess, of the challenges we face and how those costs can mount pretty quickly when you're talking about five or six kilometres of trail,' he said. What can seem simple in theory — like installing new infrastructure on an existing road — can be quite complex in reality, said Dickson. 'There's more priorities than can be tackled on any given year,' Dickson said. 'There's pressure from all sides to make the right decision, right, with respect to investment, so we try to take the most defensible approach.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Associated Press
10-07-2025
- Associated Press
Plans to improve Lahaina evacuation routes are slowly inching forward
Maui County has taken early steps toward acquiring the land it will need to extend key Lahaina roadways and give residents there better — and faster — evacuation options during emergencies like the 2023 wildfire that destroyed most of the town and killed at least 102 people. The county several weeks ago purchased property that would allow for the extension of Aki Road through an area of the Kuhua Camp neighborhood that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considers a critical pathway. The County Council on Tuesday also unanimously voted to approve the purchase of several small parcels that are important for efforts to extend Dickenson and Kuhua streets to the south. However, some county leaders and residents say they're frustrated at how long it's taking to complete the most urgent road extensions in one of the deadliest and hardest-hit areas during the fire. It will probably be several years before the county is able to extend Kuhua Street to the north and connect it to Keawe Street. Had that route been in place during the wildfire, along with the Aki Street extension, nearly three dozen victims in the Kuhua Camp neighborhood — the largest concentration of people who died in the disaster — may have actually survived, according to computer modeling that the Army Corps provided last year to Maui County planners. Currently, Kuhua Street dead-ends to the north and Aki Street is divided by a private residential lot. Removing that dead end and connecting lower Aki with upper Aki would provide critical evacuation routes that weren't available during the deadly Lahaina fire. Kirk Boes, a longtime Maui resident who narrowly escaped from his home on Kuhua Street before it burned down in the 2023 wildfire, said he was disappointed that the recent land acquisitions did not advance efforts to widen Kuhua Street — which currently terminates at a dead end — or extend the road northward. 'That should be the priority, because that's where the residential development and all the housing is, and that's where everybody gets trapped in the jumble,' he said, recalling the chaos that reigned over the neighborhood when terrified residents realized that their only escape routes were blocked by locked gates, downed trees and fallen power lines. 'It seems like they're going about things in piecemeal fashion, and it seems like acquiring these lots should be a pretty low priority. It doesn't get to the big problems.' In the Lahaina Long-term Recovery Plan, the Kuhua Street extension was highlighted as one of the county's priorities, but because of the hefty $36 million estimated price tag and the complexity related to land acquisition and construction permitting, a predicted completion date is still years away. The drawn-out timeline is disappointing, Boes said. Even though he and his wife have continued to live in temporary housing since the fire, they would not consider attempting to rebuild until the northward extension of Kuhua Street is complete and the county has determined how it plans to widen the road, he said. 'We thought that was our forever home, but it would be absurd to go down there, in my opinion and for too many people to start building homes in this neighborhood until they have to have an alternate route to get out,' he said. 'We barely made it out alive.' Though incremental progress was made this week when council members gave the county the go-ahead to pay $1.95 million to Hope Builders, Inc. and Wainee Land 8s Homes for 1.724 acres near Dickenson and Mill streets, the affected land is only anticipated to help with the county's southward extension of Kuhua Street. Both corporations are run by local developer Peter Martin. While the Kuhua Street extension has repeatedly been identified as critical in order to improve evacuation options for residents, county officials have outlined several other planned road extension and connectivity projects intended to provide life-saving evacuation routes and improve public safety. Construction on the different projects is expected to begin at varying points over the next decade, said Jordan Molina, the director of the Department of Public Works, during last week's community meeting in Lahaina. The Aki Street extension is now expected to be among the first to be completed, with the two segments of the street possibly being connected within the next couple of months, Molina said. 'There was a small stretch of Aki Street that was not part of the public roadway system,' he said. 'We did successfully get that land acquired from the property owner, who was very gracious in cooperating with us, and so we're working to get that last segment tied in to complete that corridor.' Brian Acason, the Maui resident who owns the parcel splitting Aki Street, said the process of selling the land to the county was smooth. 'I've lived here 50 years, and I want to be part of the community,' he said, adding that in the fire aftermath something had to be done to address access and evacuation challenges. Records show the county purchased the narrow length needed to extend Aki through his property for $178,000 on May 28. Acason said he's not yet sure what he'll do with his now two parcels split by the road right-of-way. Other projects, including plans to join the three currently unconnected segments of Dickenson Street have a much longer road ahead, Molina said. 'These are projects that are currently being planned and the construction is anticipated in a five to 10-year time frame,' he said. Council members have also discussed other potential property acquisitions. In February, the council's Disaster Recovery, International Affairs and Planning Committee unanimously recommended the purchase of a 24,018-square-foot lot on Limahana Place for $1.7 million. Ownership of that property would provide the county with additional land that could be used for the Kuhua Street extension and to connect Pāpalaua Street to Aki Street. Even though many of the parcels the county is on track to purchase are on the relative outskirts of the land needed to complete the projects, county officials needed to consider any opportunity to move forward efforts to extend the streets and improve the area's infrastructure, said council member Tamara Paltin, who represents Lahaina and West Maui. Council member Gabe Johnson, who represents Lānaʻi, said the majority of West Maui community members support street extension projects and other initiatives intended to improve emergency evacuation route options, and the government should be looking for ways to 'cut some of the red tape' and speed up the process. 'I wish we had more of an aggressive approach,' he said Tuesday. 'We're basically waiting for the next disaster, so we should act with a sense of urgency. Sometimes our own processes are the ones that get in our way.' ___ Civil Beat reporter Matthew Leonard contributed to this story. ___ This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
CBS News
04-06-2025
- CBS News
West Sacramento considers adopting Vision Zero plan to cut traffic deaths in half
WEST SACRAMENTO — West Sacramento city leaders are preparing to take a major step toward improving traffic safety. On Wednesday, they will consider adopting Vision Zero, a comprehensive plan aimed at reducing serious vehicle collisions by 50% over the next decade. Traffic safety advocate Dana Aika Miranda says the city needs to do more to slow drivers down. "A lot of it is attributed to really wide streets that encourage drivers to want to speed," said Miranda, manager of the Civic Thread Project. Research found that there were 101 serious vehicle collisions in West Sacramento over a seven-year period, resulting in an average of four deaths each year. Just 3% of the streets are responsible for 70% of the major crashes. "Perhaps the environment isn't actually doing what it should," Miranda said. "Signs are only signs and paint is only paint." The most dangerous road by far is West Capitol Avenue, which is a busy commercial corridor and a former state highway. Four of its intersections had nine or more serious crashes. The city is now meeting with community members to identify danger spots and look for ways to improve safety. "Really, our focus here is how do we prioritize where our limited resources are going to go in order to improve those conditions?" said Andrea Ouse, director of West Sacramento community development. So what kinds of traffic safety measures are being considered? "Improving sidewalk networks throughout the city, improving the bike infrastructure throughout the community and really maintaining a safe environment for all modes of transportation to reduce the fatalities and serious injuries," Ouse said. Some progress has already been made, like installing bike lanes along West Capitol and a new bike and pedestrian bridge to get across Highway 50. But advocates say more money and resources need to go towards preventing any more crashes. "It is one of those problems that can be solved," Miranda said. The city has allocated $350,000 toward its Vision Zero goal, with the majority of the money coming from a federal Safe Streets grant.
