- Thousands of pedestrians are killed every year on our nation's roads.
- Speed, location, vehicle size, and alcohol are major risk factors.
- Pedestrian injuries and deaths are preventable.
Facts
- Over 8,000 pedestrians were killed on our nation's roads in crashes involving a motor vehicle in 2022. That's about one death every 64 minutes.
- There were also an estimated 140,000 emergency department visits of pedestrians treated for non-fatal crash-related injuries in 2022.
- One in five people who died in crashes in 2022 were pedestrians.
Risk factors
Speed, location, vehicle size, and alcohol are major risk factors.
- Higher vehicle speeds increase both the likelihood of a pedestrian being struck by a car and the injury severity.23
- Most pedestrian deaths (60% in 2021) occur on high-capacity urban roads that typically have posted speed limits of 45-55 miles per hour.
- Many of these roads suffer from a design conflict between providing destinations (e.g., stores, restaurants) that people need to access and allowing high travel speeds that often prioritize vehicle movement.
- For example, among 60 roads that had the most pedestrian deaths during 2001-2016, all were roads with adjacent commercial retail space, nearly all were multilane roads, and more than three-quarters had speed limits of 30 miles per hour or higher.5
- SUVs can cause more harm to a person on foot when a crash occurs because of the vehicle's greater body weight and larger profile.6
- Alcohol was involved for the driver and/or pedestrian in nearly half (48%) of crashes that resulted in a pedestrian death in 2022.7 In these crashes:
- About one out of six (18%) involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.08 grams per deciliter (g/dL)—a level that is illegal for adults aged 21 and older in all U.S. states.
- About one out of three (30%) involved a pedestrian with a BAC of at least 0.08 g/dL.