Motor vehicle collisions are the leading cause of accidental death in California, resulting in over 3,000 fatalities every year.(1) Yet often lost in these traffic safety statistics is the fact that a substantial number of auto-related deaths and injuries every year are not drivers and passengers but pedestrians. In fact, more than 20 percent of all traffic-related deaths every year in California are actually pedestrians, the most vulnerable and yet the most prevalent users of our transportation network. For a variety of reasons, the state of pedestrian safety in California is a cause for considerable concern:

• More than 600 people are killed and another 13,000 are injured every year as pedestrians in California. Being hit by a car while walking is the second leading cause of death for California children aged 5-12. Statewide, nearly 5,000 child pedestrians are injured annually.(2)

• Pedestrians are often ignored in the traditional transportation planning process. California pedestrians account for more than 20 percent of all traffic fatalities but receive less than one percent of federal traffic safety funding.(3) California’s 43 regional transportation planning agencies have recently received billions of dollars of federal and state transportation funding, but very few of their regional planning or programming documents contain pedestrian-oriented projects beyond those required by federal law.

• Not only are state and local transportation agencies failing to allocate adequate funding to address pedestrian safety issues, they are also beginning to remove crosswalks because transportation officials believe that they provide pedestrians with a false sense of security. Often pedestrians are not even seen as legitimate users of the road. Until recently they were referred to as "traffic flow interruptions" in the Highway Capacity Manual, the primary road design reference book for traffic engineers.

• There have been sharp decreases in the number of children who walk and bicycle to school, even those who live within short distances. Parents are increasingly driving their children back and forth to school due primarily to concerns about traffic. These automobile trips occur during peak rush hours and clog up streets in the vicinity of school facilities as well as choke critical local intersections and roadways.

• The physical design of neighborhoods and communities has changed in a way that makes walking both inconvenient and dangerous. Newer suburban subdivisions are often designed with few provisions for pedestrians, and sprawling new development has pushed destinations further and further apart, contributing to the dramatic decline in walking. Many of these changes are the result of strict zoning codes and ordinances.

• The disappearance of safe and inviting places where people can walk and bike has had a tremendous impact on the independence and mobility of all Californians, but in particular children, seniors and the disabled. The fact that fewer people are walking less often has coincided with a dramatic decline in physical activity and a concurrent increase in obesity, especially among children.

Talk to Californians who have lived in the state for several decades, and they will likely recall a time when motorists used to stop whenever a pedestrian stepped off the curb into the street. Thirty years later, California has become one of the most dangerous states in the U.S. for pedestrians and home to 5 of the 20 metropolitan areas nationwide with the highest death rates due to aggressive driving.(4) This is largely because of an exponential increase in traffic, the prevalence of sprawling suburban development, the lack of an institutional recognition of the problem, and the overall decline in the amount of pedestrian activity on streets and in neighborhoods throughout the state.

This last trend has given rise to an unfortunate safety paradox: the disappearance of safe and inviting places for people to walk leads to fewer people walking, resulting in fewer overall pedestrian fatalities and injuries. This ultimately means that even less attention is paid to the problem by traffic engineers, planners and political leaders—precisely the people who are in the position to reverse these troubling trends.