Unfortunately, the significant public health crisis that surrounds pedestrian deaths and injuries remains largely unnoticed because of a tendency to blame the pedestrian for the collision. As mentioned earlier, the Highway Capacity Manual—the most often-used road design reference for traffic engineers—until recently defined pedestrians as traffic "flow interruptions." Police reports are often designed to describe vehicle-pedestrian collisions in terms of what the pedestrian did wrong.(7) Seldom do reports of pedestrian fatalities, particularly in the media, record the actions of the driver, describe how fast the car was traveling, or note whether the motorist was paying attention.

Yet research has concluded that the fault of pedestrian-vehicle collisions frequently rests with drivers. When investigating child pedestrian injury cases, a recent study found that "drivers leave most of the responsibility for avoiding collisions to the [child] pedestrian."(8) Previous studies have found driver negligence to be a factor in one-third to one-half of all child pedestrian collisions.(9) A more recent study of pedestrian fatalities in New York City found drivers largely or partly to blame in more than 70 percent all of incidents, and found pedestrians at fault only 18 percent of the time.(10)

Transportation agencies and officials, however, have been reluctant even to acknowledge the problem. Several local jurisdictions are indeed striving to make pedestrians a priority by improving sidewalks, slowing traffic, making crosswalks more visible, or even installing flashing lights in the pavement that are triggered by sensors whenever a pedestrian approaches. Unfortunately, the more typical response to concerns about pedestrian safety is to remove crosswalks and let pedestrians fend for themselves.

State, regional and local transportation agencies have also largely ignored the needs of pedestrians when planning and programming billions of dollars in transportation funding each year. The state Department of Transportation (Caltrans) spends less than one percent of its federal traffic safety funds on pedestrians even though more than 20 percent of all traffic fatalities statewide are pedestrians. This is true even though many Caltrans-owned and operated state highways also serve as main streets for towns and cities throughout the state, functioning as critical corridors for pedestrian activity.

Regional transportation planning agencies also play a crucial role in planning and operating the state’s transportation network. Yet despite the fact that federal and state transportation funding has been made increasingly flexible, and that authority over spending decisions now largely rests with these 43 regional agencies, very few of their regional plans or programming documents contain any pedestrian-oriented projects beyond a minimal amount required by federal law. Unfortunately, the state and regions all too often rely on local governments to fund pedestrian safety projects, even though towns and cities are increasingly strapped for cash and usually lack the dedicated sources of transportation funding that the larger agencies enjoy.