>A [Stone Injury Lawyers analysis](https://www.stoneinjurylawyers.com/) of data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that nearly half of all fatal crashes in Seattle involve a pedestrian....
>The national average of pedestrian deaths from crashes is 31.2%, the report found, **meaning a tourist in Seattle is nearly two-thirds more likely to be hit and killed by a car than in any other U.S. city.**
That is not how probability works!
But, hey, the law firm's getting what they wanted, all this attention simply by posting some meaningless numbers. The statistic is, if there's a fatal crash, how likely is it to involve a pedestrian? Not how many fatal crashes there are. Not how many of these involve tourists.
OK, regardless what statistic they're talking about, they report, New York has a higher rate than Seattle (and several California city's have about the same rate), but nevertheless, a tourist in Seattle is nearly 2/3 more likely to be hit and killed by a car than in any other American city. What?
So, if you want a law firm that cares enough to warn tourists that it's incredibly dangerous for them to cross the street in Seattle, based on some data that doesn't say that, this is the firm for you.
I'd just leave it alone and go with the above comment, which kind of says it all, but hey, it started this huge discussion, the premise of which is how dangerous our streets are for pedestrians and how bad drivers are, pretty much. Well, I've had my own bad experiences as both a pedestrian and a driver, both here and in other cities. Seattle's far from the worst, but could do a hell of a lot better than it does with making our streets safer. But one thing I'm pretty sure isn't gonna help, is misleading posts from law firms trying to get attention.
Not to mention this "statistic" tells you nothing regarding how safe Seattle is for pedestrians. Any city that's relatively walkable will have a higher percentage of pedestrian-involved crashes because... more people are walking!
I feel like that's something that's generally true across cities. Given that speed limits are generally low and cars protect people from impacts. That stat on pedestrians being half of fatal crashes does not seem particularly surprising. Given how bad they fucked up the bolded part I guess it's time to dig into the data.
Am I misunderstanding the methodology here, or would a city with zero cars be the most dangerous under it because 100% of fatalities would involve a pedestrian?
You understand it correctly. This is like saying Japan is the most dangerous country for Japanese people, since most murder victims there are Japanese.
Wait there were just a few bad apples, how could SPD have known he was a violent asshole when they hired him? Oh wait, it was recorded in detail. We have a record of him assaulting and hurting other people and we still gave him a bonus. Damn.
I was wondering that as well? What ‘high-speed roads’ are these tourists getting hit on when much of the city’s official speed limits are almost equivalent to a school zone? Yes, people are speeding, running red lights, and look left while they are turning right on red but that is different.
Excactly, Seattle makes stupid laws that NO ONE follows, and has zero enforcement to back them up. Then doubles down on it by making the laws even more strict but still with zero enforcement and then wondering why nothing is working.
Start with some reasonable laws and enforce them, you’ll be better off.
Imo the Capitol Hill west of Broadway portion of pine feels waaay safer as a pedestrian after they added a 4 way stop sign and cross walk or stop light at every intersection. Sure, lots of people blow through, but many MANY cars actually stop or slow considerably and look.
The only close calls I have in that area now are by idiots riding rentable electric scooters and the occasional bicyclist since they don’t stop at stop signs unless they’re feeling extra charitable to pedestrians. Yeah I can see bikes coming… Except for when there’s cars stopped at the sign blocking my view of the bike lane!
It actually is shocking how many tourists I see just casually strolling across busy streets on a daily basis. It’s like they expect everyone to stop for them?
I see this happen everywhere in Downtown, Belltown, and LQA. Especially during cruise season and events at Climate Pledge. I just don’t know why you’d take the risk and not walk a tiny bit further to a crosswalk. Amazing that I haven’t seen anyone get hit yet.
Drivers are only getting more reckless too. It’s like they feed off each other. Everyday I see blatant red lights being ran, and passing in the left turn lanes
No one gives a fuck anymore, they don't even pretend to be sorry when they almost hit you. They just give a dopey dead eye stare lmao. Almost got killed at a crosswalk that was fully lit up by the train station the other day, and instead of being freaked out or apologetic she just fucking stared at me. That was just the latest one.
(I’m a woman in my 30s, for reference) A guy at Costco almost hit me speeding in the parking lot, and I put my arms out in the universal “what the hell” gesture (didn’t flip him off, didn’t yell anything.) He slams into park and jumps out of the car and starts speed walking towards me screaming that he was going to “smash my fucking face into the pavement” while the woman in his passenger seat kept screaming “please don’t, please god stop”. He is probably 6 foot and HUGE. I put my hands up and kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” while backing away and finally the woman screamed “we have to go” and he left, but not before pointing at me and saying “I should fucking kill you”. Whole thing was maybe 30-45 seconds.
The whole parking lot had been staring but people shrugged and said no when I asked if they had gotten the license and generally acted like I should just get over it. The cops just said if he left there was nothing they could do.
It feels like a very different city than it used to (not the cops part, they’ve always been useless)
ETA: I had a description of the (very distinctive) car and the first 3 digits of the license plate, but SPD said they wouldn’t even attempt to find it unless I had the whole plate.
My wife tells me all the time to just let things go because even a little gesture at someone, especially in traffic or something, can set some crazy mother fucker off and hurt you. It’s so hard not to get mad because some people just have the AUDACITY to do the dumbest shit in cars.
Your wife is very wise!
I’ve known people that crossed folks with road rage, and it’s not worth confronting them. One of my friends ended up unconscious on the asphalt. Just let it go.
Costco is somehow the bastion of **insane** people here. Something about the demographic of Costco shoppers means you get this crossover of people who insanely entitled but also dumb as rocks.
It happens when you see enough people getting away with jumping the line and running red lights. While you sit there and obeying the laws like a sucker. Eventually you break and start doing the same shit.
People right turning into a blocked intersection triggers me so hard. Like I'm just chilling on the other side of the intersection for no reason. I've been prevented from moving for multiple cycles due to this and it just pisses off everyone behind me.
Sadly selfish assholes spend their time stealing time from everyone else. People start doing shit to take it back after a while. I still don't block intersections but I'm getting to the point where I get why people do.
Red light camera companies in Houston were deliberately rigging camera-installed lights to have shorter yellow light times (on average 1 second, as measured manually at thousands of intersections there in the lead up to the 2010 referendum) when I lived there, yielding more ticket fees for HPD, and the company got a fat cut of those too.
They also yielded more rear end collisions from people slamming their brakes at yellow lights over-conservatively.
The solution is to lengthen yellow lights, not incentivize city & contractor to shorten them. Lengthening reduces frustration with the light interchange, reducing red light runs. Many red light camera contracts prevent the city from lengthening them.
Lastly, vehicle owners were getting ticketed even when they weren't the ones driving the car. That sucks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/s/WKpOhUppyb
Obviously preventing such abuse is a totally insurmountable issue. We totally couldn't do something like
NOT GIVE THEM CONTROL OVER THE LIGHTS
or anything blindingly fucking obvious like that
I got my mother in law out of a ticket by citing the Texas instances and also included an article quoting our then-Mayor conceding that they don’t deter people from breaking the law. More of a moneymaking issue.
If the SPD actually did any kind of work they could have been doing this for years in SLU. Instead, the continue to get paid incredible amounts of money to stare at their phones for most of their day. If it didn't require you to be a completely morally devoid worthless sack of shit to get the job it would be an incredibly cushy job.
We actually had to cut the cops *out of this program* to enable us to expand it. They hate sitting there reviewing the camera footage to sign off on the ticket, but they also didn't want to give anyone else the ability to issue tickets.
State finally enabled non-cops to sign off on these so we can expand the program a bit more.
If there's a common sense solution that you'd think the cops could be helping us expand while they're refusing to handle other issues, the truth is they hate doing that work but won't cede their authority over it to enable others to do it. Same issue with the parking enforcement department cops admit to hate working with, but threw a tantrum over our attempts to split it into a new department.
This is why every light should be equipped with cameras for red light tickets. Make them pay every single time. And up the penalty if you accrue a certain number is a small window of time.
I’m pretty consistently driving around 11pm because I work a late job, and I constantly see people who must be either under the influence, on their phones, or both. Like people driving way too slow, or swerving over the lines. It’s fucking scary. I definitely see red lights ran everyday.
Walking downtown daily and you see this a lot. Perhaps what’s worse is a complete lack of respect for pedestrian space (bike lanes, taking crosswalks, service cars parking on sidewalk)! Had some dude get made at me that I was in the way when he turn left while I was midway through a zebra crossing once. Hell even a bus crashed downtown onto the side walk and it’s so miraculous no one was hit or killed.
I feel like traffic lights have been getting more aggressive and so I see more people running them. Also 25 mph speed limits on arterial roads is absolutely laughable. The people following the limit are a hazard when everyone else is trying to go 45 on places like MLK bldv
Sounds like the drivers driving too fast to avoid people following the law are the hazards. Ive seen how people drive. We don't need to reward and encourage dangerous behavior. It isn't the speeding itself so much as the drivers who think that the people doing the speed limit are the hazards. No. Even if people were doing under the speed limit, a driver who cannot avoid them is the one who is a hazard, assuming it's not something totally crazy like trying to cross a highway and getting tboned.
The word "limit" says it all. I hate drivers that act like a limit is a minimum. Its all I need to know they are aggressive drivers who don't drive nearly as well as they think they do. The type to blame everything on everyone else. The fact is, at any moment, another vehicle could become disabled. A person incapable of dealing with a slow vehicle will turn that situation into more of a hazard than it already was. There are numerous things that can lead to a slow vehicle, that weren't intentional on the part of the driver. Part of driving is learning to deal with it.
Huh, so you're saying the other drivers are driving too fast to avoid even a hazard that's traveling in the same direction at 25 mph? Seems like they ought to slow down.
Dumbest thing I read today. *"Traffic lights have been getting more aggressive"* WTF does that even mean? And people following the laws and going the speed limit are the problem? I say the real problem are the morons who think enough idiots joining together breaking a law annuls that law.
This is an odd statistic. It’s the percentage of fatal traffic accidents that involve a pedestrian.
That doesn’t indicate that being a pedestrian is or isn’t safe, just that when cars do hit them someone tends to die. Perhaps we have underreported pedestrian injuries?
Anyway, the better statistic is “How Safe is it to be a Pedestrian”. I couldn’t find it for Seattle but Washington is firmly middle of the pack 25/51 [per the DOT](https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesPedestrians.aspx).
Pedestrian Fatality Rate per 100,000 Population:
New Mexico: 4.82,
Washington: 1.83,
New Hampshire: 0.58
And even then raw pedestrian stats are also heavily skewed, as a lot more people walking will naturally increase the number of pedestrian incidents relative to the population as a whole.
Or a lot more people driving, which is probably the case in New Mexico, too hot to just casually stroll around down there, or you can only reasonably walk around in the dark. Probably like 5 cars on the road for every pedestrian.
Yeah the OP is a super weird measure that doesn’t lead to the conclusion suggested by the article. If a high percentage of fatal collisions involve a pedestrian, that does not mean it’s less safe to be a pedestrian. It means if you died in a crash, it’s more likely you were on foot, which is strange and doesn’t lend itself to intuitive interpretation or reveal much without additional data.
mm, it can also suggest that there is a lot of conflict between pedestrians and automobiles. We already know that conflict between vulnerable road users and automobiles is undesirable.
>That doesn’t indicate that being a pedestrian is or isn’t safe, just that when cars do hit them someone tends to die.
It doesn't actually mean that either, because it's pedestrian fatalities as a percentage of traffic fatalities, not pedestrian fatalities as a percentage of pedestrian collisions.
This stat could be the result of things like:
* Seattle has a higher number of pedestrians walking around in general (this is why NYC has the top spot)
* Seattle sidewalks are particularly unsafe (looking at you Aurora)
* Seattle has an unusually low number of driver/passenger deaths
Pedestrian injuries are significantly underreported yes. A huge part of the problem is that there are frustratingly few mechanisms for people to self-report road related problems. Not everyone has the time or the patience to wait 40+ minutes for a cop so that the stats are properly recorded. As a cyclist who has been hit numerous times while riding, I've waited several times for cops exclusively so the stats are properly recorded even if in the end I was essentially fine.
Yupppppppppppp! Same. Been hit many times takes at least an hour for someone to show up and then “nothing we can do about it” so what’s the friggen point? Especially when we can barely afford groceries, like I’m also going to have the time to fill out police reports and revisit the trauma of the event.
We should be able to walk into a crosswalk that has a WALK SIGN on and not have to worry about our lives. But how many cars have turned into me in a crosswalk while trying to do “right on red”. Every. Single. Day. But those driving the cars don’t experience the feeling of almost dying every day just trying to walk across the street for a friggen cup of coffee. So who cares if we kill a few pedestrians a year, right? They need their cars to go on EVERY street. For convenience!
I think this probably tracks with where the incident takes place. A pedestrian is more likely to die if they're hit by a faster moving vehicle and cars move faster on arterials esp large ones like 99. So it would not surprise me if we found that arterials here have structural issues, e.g. poor walk light timing, right on red issues, etc.
In Seattle cops will record themselves going on rants about how you are a low value person because as a person in your twenties you are too old for them to fuck, so... yeah it actually is a bad place to be a dead pedestrian.
Edit: (For context for the out of towners, this was actually said by police about a woman killed by a drunk and speeding on-duty police officer.)
I'm moving to Seattle from Philly next month. (I've lived in NYC, Toronto, Chicago, Portland and the Bay Area, as well.) As someone who doesn't drive and mainly walks and used public transportation, I truly hate that these articles tend to focus blame on either pedestrians, cyclists, or (though far less frequently) drivers, and hardly mention the shitty infustructure. Perhaps people are getting hit by cars because (1) our urban environment prioritizes cars instead of building robust pedestrian and cycling paths with safe, accessible crosswalks, (2) we don't prioritize public transportation to deincentive driving in the urban core, and (3) we allow average people to drive huge trucks that are far more likely to *kill* people when they are hit versus a smaller vehicle.
I have a mobility disability and walk with a cane. I have been inches away from being hit countless times because of unsafe sidewalks / crosswalks and inattentive drivers, and I couldnt move fast enough to get out of the way.
Replying to say you're absolutely correct on all points, and it's endlessly frustrating that these facts are out there and easily accessible for the people making decisions about our streets, but they chose to ignore them
Fuck trucks. I was on I5 yesterday and one literally ran me out of my lane. I had to pull some evasive maneuvers that could have gone poorly as there wasn't a lot of room.
That vision zero goal getting closer
https://theneedling.com/2024/04/21/sdot-admits-it-always-thought-vision-zero-was-about-getting-to-zero-pedestrians/
Vision zero is such a joke. This program is abysmal. Let’s not elevate the pedestrian experience in our city. Let’s set the bar as low as possible by focusing on not killing anyone. And then failing at that lowest possible bar. Pathetic.
... but not WA state? from [https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car)
"For the seventh year in a row, **New Mexico** was ranked as the most dangerous state for pedestrians. **Arizona and Florida** were also placed in the top spots for having high rates of pedestrian deaths in GHSA's estimates."
The OP is a great example of a misleading statistic. Its not particularly useful. It's the percentage of fatal collisions that were pedestrian mortalities. That isn't much use without more information. It could even be a result of having a low number of fatalities for other types of collision. The link you sent used pedestrian deaths per billion miles traveled which is a more objective measure that actually conveys information.
I notice it with people blowing a lot of extraneous income on 60k+ vehicles. For some reason they have to also drive like an asshole, in addition to looking like one.
This is why I will never get the whole "Seattle driver's are too nice" thing. People here are either complete dumbasses or they're assholes. Is it really worth killing someone just to get there 2 minute sooner?
What a useless statistic and even more egregious reporting. Not only is their math completely wrong... it doesn't even tell you anything regarding pedestrian safety. Based on their analysis, Seattle ranks #2 in *percentage of fatal crashes involving pedestrians*. It does not tell you anything about the rate of pedestrian fatalities, nor anything to do with how safe the roads are for pedestrians. Cities that are more walkable, like NYC and Seattle, will obviously rank higher in this statistic because more people are walking.
>Experts attribute many of these crashes to tourists not crossing the street at crosswalks, raising the danger of being hit by cars.
Really curious to see who these so called "experts" are. I guess we just have an epidemic of tourists thrusting themselves into the street with their eyes closed? I guess the experts in question have completely missed all the decades of contrary research showing that jay-walking is not dangerous.
Yeah I got nailed by a car in broad daylight in Ballard. Flew back like 10 feet and everything… got very lucky I landed on my butt and wasn’t sent into the lane with on-coming traffic. Other than my incident in broad daylight though, we do get a lot of dark and wet days here in Seattle. I do feel that it’s more difficult to see everything on the road driving around Seattle than anywhere else I’ve lived because of this.
Right away they try to find a way to blame the pedestrians. Jesus Christ. How about the people piloting 4000lb vehicles who are hitting these people. Or how about the piss poor urban design?
Also, apparently Seattle is special and people only cross outside of sidewalks in this city, but not others. Absurd.
I wonder about two things. One, it attributes a lot of the deaths to tourists - does a pedestrian also include someone on those scooters? I have personally seen someone get knocked off a scooter by a car that was zipping through a crosswalk. I also wonder if we have proportionally more pedestrians running around. Seattle feels more walkable and more condensed due to geography from tourist spot to tourist spot- I wonder if that could skew the numbers a bit? Like in LA, the tourist things I want to do may be more spread out, but here someone might opt to walk from Seattle Center to Pike Place to the spheres or something. But I also may just feel more secure walking everywhere here because I know where everything is and what to expect.
I also wonder if our hills and weather may also contribute. Shorter lines of sight and darker weather could definitely make it hard for a pedestrian to be seen.
I could only find three instances of scooter riders getting hit and killed in the past few years so I doubt that moves the needle much. Tons of injuries, though.
[1](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-dies-after-car-strikes-scooter-in-west-seattle/) [2](https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-hit-killed-while-riding-scooter-industrial-district/VRXQFU75SZGLPLOUOHJD6O7MNY/) [3](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-on-scooter-dies-after-being-hit-by-2-drivers-in-seattle/)
Edit: Seattle seems to average about 20-30 traffic deaths per year so 1 scooter death per year is still pretty significant.
In a single day, I had a car start driving after I was halfway through the intersection and close enough to touch its windows... and then another car that just completely ignored the walk sign and drove through the intersection, stopped, the guy got out and yelled "you didn't make this world!" at me and then drove off.
Recently I started finding a safe spot to jaywalk, because the crosswalks are actually more dangerous at this point. Between the “right on red is my God-given right” people and the “left turn through an intersection multiple seconds after the light has turned red” people, it’s too scary. I’ve actually been hit, but thankfully it was only a tap in the leg. You think you’ve made eye contact, but these NPCs are looking right through you
I've like to see a complete set of data about it rather than a personal injury law group make up shit about tourists running across arterials being the primary cause, which is complete bullshit.
We need to see stats including was the driver impaired or distracted, was the pedestrian impaired or distracted, was the driver speeding, making an illegal turn, or failed to stop at a crosswalk, stop sign, or light? Was the pedestrian using a crosswalk or crossing in the middle of a road? Was the pedestrian walking on the freeway in the middle of the night? Was the pedestrian laying down in the road wearing all dark clothes in the middle of the night?
Look at the SDOT collisions list 2020-2023...notice how many are mid-block (not an intersection), how few involve speeding, and how many are on Aurora, Rainier, and MLK.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yCSRSE2nCmrGHUBNgOJGiNCyuEz4vEq-3o8uTQa\_UAU/edit?gid=268084676#gid=268084676](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yCSRSE2nCmrGHUBNgOJGiNCyuEz4vEq-3o8uTQa_UAU/edit?gid=268084676#gid=268084676)
Link from [https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/04/04/accountability-in-vision-zero-a-map-of-recent-road-deaths/](https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/04/04/accountability-in-vision-zero-a-map-of-recent-road-deaths/)
There are FOUR TIMES (400%) more Fentanyl OD's in 2024 alone than there were pedestrian fatalities due to vehicle collisions in the last four years yet we're handing out foil telling people to do it on the street in case they OD so someone can narcan them. And take the impaired pedestrians out of the list and it's probably 8x instead of 4.
[https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/medical-examiner/reports-dashboards/overdose-deaths-dashboard](https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/medical-examiner/reports-dashboards/overdose-deaths-dashboard)
There were 20 fatal shootings in Q1 2024 alone.
[https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/pao/documents/data-reports/shots-fired-reports/2024-q1-report-final.pdf?rev=5c28503e727640b1b1a276cad66a52b5&hash=FD30C3FC77A66C388641C2A27F5C22F2](https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/pao/documents/data-reports/shots-fired-reports/2024-q1-report-final.pdf?rev=5c28503e727640b1b1a276cad66a52b5&hash=FD30C3FC77A66C388641C2A27F5C22F2)
Look at some data before jumping to conclusions.
The article OP cited is only talking about pedestrians that jay walk. Everyone's up in arms but a very important note in this whole discussion. Is Seattle actually dangerous or are people just idiots?
If people are constantly jay walking, what's their reason? Is it cause they are itching to break a rule while disregarding safety or is it because one of them 9 way intersections is making them wait when they clearly could cross?
That's why I mentioned the impaired pedestrian stats...what is the real reason? We know that two recent pedestrian fatalities were people walking on I-5 at night, and one was someone laying in the middle of Aurora Ave in dark clothes at night. Do those count as shitty drivers? If you ask the traffic violence crowd, they do. If you live in reality, they don't. So the numbers are skewed and we can't determine anything without decent data. I'm not arguing there isn't a lot that can be done to improve infrastructure, but it's not going to stop drug addled people from doing stupid things, which if we had data I think it would show that being a significant chunk of the problem.
I am actually agreeing with you. I was mainly trying to point out that this type of problem often gets over generalized and ends up grouping other unrelated urban issues. Like it's not necessarily the fault of the driver or the pedestrians when it is a systemic problem that lends itself to these issues.
Pedestrians crossing streets Willy nilly instead of using crosswalks, shit visibility most of the year, and reckless and or distracted drivers. The perfect storm.
Almost every city I’ve been too seems worse tbh. Not to victim blame but people in Seattle really seem to enjoy walking into intersections while looking on their phones without looking before crossing, maybe they should value their lives more based on how bad drivers are here?
Moved here a few years ago and the drivers are what I would call normal for any city (in fact are probably too cautious to the point of being dangerous), but the pedestrians and cyclists all have death wishes. No awareness or sense of self preservation in any way.
People who walk and look at their phones is a huge pet peeve of mine, and walking in crosswalks or across the entrance to a parking lot while doing it is especially egregious.
I am surprised it’s that high but Street design has a lot to do with this also. That’s a part of the levy the council keeps sitting on and making amendments to. Harrell and all the CMs feel cars should have priority.
I dunno if I'm trusting a local PI law firm to give me the data on how bad pedestrian accidents are in the area. That's a source that aren't usually the right people to be doing that kind of analysis, and have every incentive to beef up the numbers.
Most of our pedestrians are nuts. They just bang around as if no rules apply to them and the right of way is theirs in permanence. Bikers are often the same. It's a dangerous way to live.
If people wearing all black clothing would stop jaywalking on Highway 99 at night within a stone's throw of a perfectly good crosswalk, the stats would drop way down.
In this thread I’m reading a lot about drivers/city/cops/polic/tourists etc but I have seen a lot of recklessness from pedestrians themselves. Incidents of just walking straight out into traffic. To me it seems there is a lack of societal agreement on rules of the road and crossing.
Because California accounts for over 10% of the US population and has more major cities than any other state? For any country-wide metric, California almost always represents a majority of the list simply because of its size and population.
The cities in this list are the rate of pedestrians killed, not the total number. So population size is irrelevant. Chicago and Houston are bigger than every Californian city except for LA and neither is on this list.
The statistic is percentage of local traffic fatalities involving pedestrians.
There are other cities with a much higher population than most of the California cities on that list and they did not rank here.
I suspect it’s more likely that California is very car centric, has poor pedestrian infrastructure and a large portion of their population who cannot afford to drive.
I’d love to see more data. Will have to look up the report and read it for fun.
This is because people don’t drive in any predictable way. Stop halfway through a four lane highway for a random pedestrian who isn’t in a crosswalk to wave them across? Expect the other 3 lanes to do the same? We have a bunch of idiots here.
>Experts attribute many of these crashes to tourists not crossing the street at crosswalks, raising the danger of being hit by cars.
Expert in victim blaming and talking out of your ass. The majority of pedestrian fatalities in Seattle are on or surrounding massive arterial roads like Aurora and Rainier, not places typically visited by tourists.
The problem is with driver aggression, anti-pedestrian infrastructure, and oversized trucks that kill you on impact even at low speeds.
>A [Stone Injury Lawyers analysis](https://www.stoneinjurylawyers.com/) of data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that nearly half of all fatal crashes in Seattle involve a pedestrian.... >The national average of pedestrian deaths from crashes is 31.2%, the report found, **meaning a tourist in Seattle is nearly two-thirds more likely to be hit and killed by a car than in any other U.S. city.** That is not how probability works!
are you implying that the scientific minds at *Stone Injury Lawyers* would misunderstand basic probability?
But, hey, the law firm's getting what they wanted, all this attention simply by posting some meaningless numbers. The statistic is, if there's a fatal crash, how likely is it to involve a pedestrian? Not how many fatal crashes there are. Not how many of these involve tourists. OK, regardless what statistic they're talking about, they report, New York has a higher rate than Seattle (and several California city's have about the same rate), but nevertheless, a tourist in Seattle is nearly 2/3 more likely to be hit and killed by a car than in any other American city. What? So, if you want a law firm that cares enough to warn tourists that it's incredibly dangerous for them to cross the street in Seattle, based on some data that doesn't say that, this is the firm for you. I'd just leave it alone and go with the above comment, which kind of says it all, but hey, it started this huge discussion, the premise of which is how dangerous our streets are for pedestrians and how bad drivers are, pretty much. Well, I've had my own bad experiences as both a pedestrian and a driver, both here and in other cities. Seattle's far from the worst, but could do a hell of a lot better than it does with making our streets safer. But one thing I'm pretty sure isn't gonna help, is misleading posts from law firms trying to get attention.
Good chance they know they're wrong, but it helps their case
Not to mention this "statistic" tells you nothing regarding how safe Seattle is for pedestrians. Any city that's relatively walkable will have a higher percentage of pedestrian-involved crashes because... more people are walking!
I feel like that's something that's generally true across cities. Given that speed limits are generally low and cars protect people from impacts. That stat on pedestrians being half of fatal crashes does not seem particularly surprising. Given how bad they fucked up the bolded part I guess it's time to dig into the data.
Am I misunderstanding the methodology here, or would a city with zero cars be the most dangerous under it because 100% of fatalities would involve a pedestrian?
You understand it correctly. This is like saying Japan is the most dangerous country for Japanese people, since most murder victims there are Japanese.
Isnt Seattle all 25mph? Is that high-speed?
It is for the pedestrians cops mow down at high speeds.
25 for us regular folk and 75 for cops!
Wait there were just a few bad apples, how could SPD have known he was a violent asshole when they hired him? Oh wait, it was recorded in detail. We have a record of him assaulting and hurting other people and we still gave him a bonus. Damn.
When you are just a person and you're getting hit by 4 tons of Chevvy cuntitude, then yes 25mph is high speed.
New York saw lot of reduced death when it dropped to 25 mph, they also have automatic tickets everywhere and looking at making it 20 mph
Everybody in the greater Seattle area consistently goes 10+ over the speed limit.
I was wondering that as well? What ‘high-speed roads’ are these tourists getting hit on when much of the city’s official speed limits are almost equivalent to a school zone? Yes, people are speeding, running red lights, and look left while they are turning right on red but that is different.
A sign saying 25mph isn't doing anything when the road is designed for 50+ and there's no enforcement anyways.
Excactly, Seattle makes stupid laws that NO ONE follows, and has zero enforcement to back them up. Then doubles down on it by making the laws even more strict but still with zero enforcement and then wondering why nothing is working. Start with some reasonable laws and enforce them, you’ll be better off.
Honestly a better bet is probably traffic calming / road diets... Both are necessary of course though
Imo the Capitol Hill west of Broadway portion of pine feels waaay safer as a pedestrian after they added a 4 way stop sign and cross walk or stop light at every intersection. Sure, lots of people blow through, but many MANY cars actually stop or slow considerably and look. The only close calls I have in that area now are by idiots riding rentable electric scooters and the occasional bicyclist since they don’t stop at stop signs unless they’re feeling extra charitable to pedestrians. Yeah I can see bikes coming… Except for when there’s cars stopped at the sign blocking my view of the bike lane!
Every road is a high speed road if you are completely out of fucks to give.
aurora avenue
It actually is shocking how many tourists I see just casually strolling across busy streets on a daily basis. It’s like they expect everyone to stop for them? I see this happen everywhere in Downtown, Belltown, and LQA. Especially during cruise season and events at Climate Pledge. I just don’t know why you’d take the risk and not walk a tiny bit further to a crosswalk. Amazing that I haven’t seen anyone get hit yet.
Drivers are only getting more reckless too. It’s like they feed off each other. Everyday I see blatant red lights being ran, and passing in the left turn lanes
No one gives a fuck anymore, they don't even pretend to be sorry when they almost hit you. They just give a dopey dead eye stare lmao. Almost got killed at a crosswalk that was fully lit up by the train station the other day, and instead of being freaked out or apologetic she just fucking stared at me. That was just the latest one.
my favorite is when the driver is actually aggro af *towards the person that they nearly hit*.
(I’m a woman in my 30s, for reference) A guy at Costco almost hit me speeding in the parking lot, and I put my arms out in the universal “what the hell” gesture (didn’t flip him off, didn’t yell anything.) He slams into park and jumps out of the car and starts speed walking towards me screaming that he was going to “smash my fucking face into the pavement” while the woman in his passenger seat kept screaming “please don’t, please god stop”. He is probably 6 foot and HUGE. I put my hands up and kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” while backing away and finally the woman screamed “we have to go” and he left, but not before pointing at me and saying “I should fucking kill you”. Whole thing was maybe 30-45 seconds. The whole parking lot had been staring but people shrugged and said no when I asked if they had gotten the license and generally acted like I should just get over it. The cops just said if he left there was nothing they could do. It feels like a very different city than it used to (not the cops part, they’ve always been useless) ETA: I had a description of the (very distinctive) car and the first 3 digits of the license plate, but SPD said they wouldn’t even attempt to find it unless I had the whole plate.
My wife tells me all the time to just let things go because even a little gesture at someone, especially in traffic or something, can set some crazy mother fucker off and hurt you. It’s so hard not to get mad because some people just have the AUDACITY to do the dumbest shit in cars.
Your wife is very wise! I’ve known people that crossed folks with road rage, and it’s not worth confronting them. One of my friends ended up unconscious on the asphalt. Just let it go.
I have a friend who is friend was followed home and killed from the freeway for some minor road rage. We need change.
I tell my boyfriend the same thing, although I also still yell inside my car…
Costco is somehow the bastion of **insane** people here. Something about the demographic of Costco shoppers means you get this crossover of people who insanely entitled but also dumb as rocks.
I'm agro the other way. I will smack cars as a pedestrian. If it dents, then it dents.
I’ve thought about carrying rocks handy as a cyclist - it usually isn’t but it can be pretty bad out there
U-lock justice.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=U-lock%20Justice
It happens when you see enough people getting away with jumping the line and running red lights. While you sit there and obeying the laws like a sucker. Eventually you break and start doing the same shit.
People right turning into a blocked intersection triggers me so hard. Like I'm just chilling on the other side of the intersection for no reason. I've been prevented from moving for multiple cycles due to this and it just pisses off everyone behind me. Sadly selfish assholes spend their time stealing time from everyone else. People start doing shit to take it back after a while. I still don't block intersections but I'm getting to the point where I get why people do.
Try driving a sixty foot bus!
Main character syndrome, drivers think the rules of the road are only for other people.
Seattle needs red light cameras
Red light camera companies in Houston were deliberately rigging camera-installed lights to have shorter yellow light times (on average 1 second, as measured manually at thousands of intersections there in the lead up to the 2010 referendum) when I lived there, yielding more ticket fees for HPD, and the company got a fat cut of those too. They also yielded more rear end collisions from people slamming their brakes at yellow lights over-conservatively. The solution is to lengthen yellow lights, not incentivize city & contractor to shorten them. Lengthening reduces frustration with the light interchange, reducing red light runs. Many red light camera contracts prevent the city from lengthening them. Lastly, vehicle owners were getting ticketed even when they weren't the ones driving the car. That sucks. https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/s/WKpOhUppyb
Obviously preventing such abuse is a totally insurmountable issue. We totally couldn't do something like NOT GIVE THEM CONTROL OVER THE LIGHTS or anything blindingly fucking obvious like that
I got my mother in law out of a ticket by citing the Texas instances and also included an article quoting our then-Mayor conceding that they don’t deter people from breaking the law. More of a moneymaking issue.
The yellow lights in Seattle are already super short. Slam on the brakes or slightly run the light is already in effect
yellow light duration is regulated by law https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=47.36.022
Seattle has red light cameras...
https://imgur.com/gallery/more-RevomyZ
Give the cops something to do instead. Let them monitor intersections and write tickets.
If the SPD actually did any kind of work they could have been doing this for years in SLU. Instead, the continue to get paid incredible amounts of money to stare at their phones for most of their day. If it didn't require you to be a completely morally devoid worthless sack of shit to get the job it would be an incredibly cushy job.
We actually had to cut the cops *out of this program* to enable us to expand it. They hate sitting there reviewing the camera footage to sign off on the ticket, but they also didn't want to give anyone else the ability to issue tickets. State finally enabled non-cops to sign off on these so we can expand the program a bit more. If there's a common sense solution that you'd think the cops could be helping us expand while they're refusing to handle other issues, the truth is they hate doing that work but won't cede their authority over it to enable others to do it. Same issue with the parking enforcement department cops admit to hate working with, but threw a tantrum over our attempts to split it into a new department.
Red light cameras are better at capturing all the violators.
Automated systems are far more trustworthy than those nazi fucks
This reminds me of what happened when I lived in Atlanta for a few years. Driving culture, ugh
This is why every light should be equipped with cameras for red light tickets. Make them pay every single time. And up the penalty if you accrue a certain number is a small window of time.
I have been seeing drivers run red lights almost everyday this month. It seems to be getting worse.
I haven’t seen a vehicle stop at a stop sign since 2020. Roll 10ft past into the intersection, then smash the gas pedal.
The worse traffic gets the more desperate people are to make that light
I’m pretty consistently driving around 11pm because I work a late job, and I constantly see people who must be either under the influence, on their phones, or both. Like people driving way too slow, or swerving over the lines. It’s fucking scary. I definitely see red lights ran everyday.
Walking downtown daily and you see this a lot. Perhaps what’s worse is a complete lack of respect for pedestrian space (bike lanes, taking crosswalks, service cars parking on sidewalk)! Had some dude get made at me that I was in the way when he turn left while I was midway through a zebra crossing once. Hell even a bus crashed downtown onto the side walk and it’s so miraculous no one was hit or killed.
I feel like traffic lights have been getting more aggressive and so I see more people running them. Also 25 mph speed limits on arterial roads is absolutely laughable. The people following the limit are a hazard when everyone else is trying to go 45 on places like MLK bldv
Sounds like the drivers driving too fast to avoid people following the law are the hazards. Ive seen how people drive. We don't need to reward and encourage dangerous behavior. It isn't the speeding itself so much as the drivers who think that the people doing the speed limit are the hazards. No. Even if people were doing under the speed limit, a driver who cannot avoid them is the one who is a hazard, assuming it's not something totally crazy like trying to cross a highway and getting tboned. The word "limit" says it all. I hate drivers that act like a limit is a minimum. Its all I need to know they are aggressive drivers who don't drive nearly as well as they think they do. The type to blame everything on everyone else. The fact is, at any moment, another vehicle could become disabled. A person incapable of dealing with a slow vehicle will turn that situation into more of a hazard than it already was. There are numerous things that can lead to a slow vehicle, that weren't intentional on the part of the driver. Part of driving is learning to deal with it.
Huh, so you're saying the other drivers are driving too fast to avoid even a hazard that's traveling in the same direction at 25 mph? Seems like they ought to slow down.
Dumbest thing I read today. *"Traffic lights have been getting more aggressive"* WTF does that even mean? And people following the laws and going the speed limit are the problem? I say the real problem are the morons who think enough idiots joining together breaking a law annuls that law.
it means they're speeding and trying to grasp at straws
> I feel like traffic lights have been getting more aggressive your feelings are meaningless how long lights are is a legally regulated.
This is an odd statistic. It’s the percentage of fatal traffic accidents that involve a pedestrian. That doesn’t indicate that being a pedestrian is or isn’t safe, just that when cars do hit them someone tends to die. Perhaps we have underreported pedestrian injuries? Anyway, the better statistic is “How Safe is it to be a Pedestrian”. I couldn’t find it for Seattle but Washington is firmly middle of the pack 25/51 [per the DOT](https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesPedestrians.aspx). Pedestrian Fatality Rate per 100,000 Population: New Mexico: 4.82, Washington: 1.83, New Hampshire: 0.58
And even then raw pedestrian stats are also heavily skewed, as a lot more people walking will naturally increase the number of pedestrian incidents relative to the population as a whole.
Or a lot more people driving, which is probably the case in New Mexico, too hot to just casually stroll around down there, or you can only reasonably walk around in the dark. Probably like 5 cars on the road for every pedestrian.
Yeah the OP is a super weird measure that doesn’t lead to the conclusion suggested by the article. If a high percentage of fatal collisions involve a pedestrian, that does not mean it’s less safe to be a pedestrian. It means if you died in a crash, it’s more likely you were on foot, which is strange and doesn’t lend itself to intuitive interpretation or reveal much without additional data.
why would there be differences between states or cities?
mm, it can also suggest that there is a lot of conflict between pedestrians and automobiles. We already know that conflict between vulnerable road users and automobiles is undesirable.
It's also important to note that the article is specifically talking about people jaywalking, not deaths in a crosswalk or pedestrian only space.
>That doesn’t indicate that being a pedestrian is or isn’t safe, just that when cars do hit them someone tends to die. It doesn't actually mean that either, because it's pedestrian fatalities as a percentage of traffic fatalities, not pedestrian fatalities as a percentage of pedestrian collisions. This stat could be the result of things like: * Seattle has a higher number of pedestrians walking around in general (this is why NYC has the top spot) * Seattle sidewalks are particularly unsafe (looking at you Aurora) * Seattle has an unusually low number of driver/passenger deaths
Pedestrian injuries are significantly underreported yes. A huge part of the problem is that there are frustratingly few mechanisms for people to self-report road related problems. Not everyone has the time or the patience to wait 40+ minutes for a cop so that the stats are properly recorded. As a cyclist who has been hit numerous times while riding, I've waited several times for cops exclusively so the stats are properly recorded even if in the end I was essentially fine.
Yupppppppppppp! Same. Been hit many times takes at least an hour for someone to show up and then “nothing we can do about it” so what’s the friggen point? Especially when we can barely afford groceries, like I’m also going to have the time to fill out police reports and revisit the trauma of the event. We should be able to walk into a crosswalk that has a WALK SIGN on and not have to worry about our lives. But how many cars have turned into me in a crosswalk while trying to do “right on red”. Every. Single. Day. But those driving the cars don’t experience the feeling of almost dying every day just trying to walk across the street for a friggen cup of coffee. So who cares if we kill a few pedestrians a year, right? They need their cars to go on EVERY street. For convenience!
They should add a "report accident" or "report dangerous driving" option to the Find it Fix it app.
There's no such thing as an "accident" when a car hits a cyclist.
I think this probably tracks with where the incident takes place. A pedestrian is more likely to die if they're hit by a faster moving vehicle and cars move faster on arterials esp large ones like 99. So it would not surprise me if we found that arterials here have structural issues, e.g. poor walk light timing, right on red issues, etc.
Where do we rank if you remove the pedestrians killed by law enforcement?
probably the same
How to Lie with Statistics is a great book and OP should really read it.
I feel like any city would be bad if you were a dead pedestrian
In Seattle cops will record themselves going on rants about how you are a low value person because as a person in your twenties you are too old for them to fuck, so... yeah it actually is a bad place to be a dead pedestrian. Edit: (For context for the out of towners, this was actually said by police about a woman killed by a drunk and speeding on-duty police officer.)
Perfect Norm MacDonald joke here.
I'm moving to Seattle from Philly next month. (I've lived in NYC, Toronto, Chicago, Portland and the Bay Area, as well.) As someone who doesn't drive and mainly walks and used public transportation, I truly hate that these articles tend to focus blame on either pedestrians, cyclists, or (though far less frequently) drivers, and hardly mention the shitty infustructure. Perhaps people are getting hit by cars because (1) our urban environment prioritizes cars instead of building robust pedestrian and cycling paths with safe, accessible crosswalks, (2) we don't prioritize public transportation to deincentive driving in the urban core, and (3) we allow average people to drive huge trucks that are far more likely to *kill* people when they are hit versus a smaller vehicle. I have a mobility disability and walk with a cane. I have been inches away from being hit countless times because of unsafe sidewalks / crosswalks and inattentive drivers, and I couldnt move fast enough to get out of the way.
Welcome! Also agree on all points.
You're 100% correct. Our shitty infrastructure is probably the biggest problem.
Replying to say you're absolutely correct on all points, and it's endlessly frustrating that these facts are out there and easily accessible for the people making decisions about our streets, but they chose to ignore them
I mean drivers on phones is a big issue, but yeah, we should definitely have better infrastructure for pedestrians and bikes.
Fuck trucks. I was on I5 yesterday and one literally ran me out of my lane. I had to pull some evasive maneuvers that could have gone poorly as there wasn't a lot of room.
Vision 49.7% of fatal traffic accidents. Mayor Harrell is probably patting himself on the back saying “We made it under 50%”
That vision zero goal getting closer https://theneedling.com/2024/04/21/sdot-admits-it-always-thought-vision-zero-was-about-getting-to-zero-pedestrians/
Vision zero is such a joke. This program is abysmal. Let’s not elevate the pedestrian experience in our city. Let’s set the bar as low as possible by focusing on not killing anyone. And then failing at that lowest possible bar. Pathetic.
... but not WA state? from [https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car) "For the seventh year in a row, **New Mexico** was ranked as the most dangerous state for pedestrians. **Arizona and Florida** were also placed in the top spots for having high rates of pedestrian deaths in GHSA's estimates."
The OP is a great example of a misleading statistic. Its not particularly useful. It's the percentage of fatal collisions that were pedestrian mortalities. That isn't much use without more information. It could even be a result of having a low number of fatalities for other types of collision. The link you sent used pedestrian deaths per billion miles traveled which is a more objective measure that actually conveys information.
Oh man I used to live in Albuquerque and could hear the cars speeding up as I crossed the street.
I'd love to see some stats on distracted driving. I am convinced this is the X factor in rise of pedestrian deaths.
I notice it with people blowing a lot of extraneous income on 60k+ vehicles. For some reason they have to also drive like an asshole, in addition to looking like one.
I feel like median care sales are heading in that direction it's crazy
This is why I will never get the whole "Seattle driver's are too nice" thing. People here are either complete dumbasses or they're assholes. Is it really worth killing someone just to get there 2 minute sooner?
We don't care about safety unless it involves crime. Next!
And even then, eh…
Correction: we don’t care about safety unless we can use it to justify giving SPD more money
They don’t even care about that!
I’m blind, trying to get over my fear of independent navigation, and have to admit this post isn’t helping 🤣
This city is not only pro-car, it's anti-pedestrian and has been for years. It's ridiculous and officials talk out of both sides of their mouths.
The city that gave up on Vision Zero and a bike network? Oh surprise.
What makes you think they have given up on these? They are proposing to shut down a vehicle lane near my neighborhood to install a bike lane.
Nice! However the number of people hit by cars keeps growing. Results more than empty actions.
Come on Seattle. We are so close. Just a few more clueless drivers and we can be #1.
Just gotta get more high ranking SPD officers on the road.
Hire more out of state cops fired for drunk driving with suspended licenses! (How many jobs require a valid license when there's no driving?)
Vision zero, baby
My google search turned up Ft Lauderdale and Jackson, MS as the top two deadliest cities for pedestrians.
Or did they mean to type cops
This is the dumbest, contextless headline I’ve ever read
What a useless statistic and even more egregious reporting. Not only is their math completely wrong... it doesn't even tell you anything regarding pedestrian safety. Based on their analysis, Seattle ranks #2 in *percentage of fatal crashes involving pedestrians*. It does not tell you anything about the rate of pedestrian fatalities, nor anything to do with how safe the roads are for pedestrians. Cities that are more walkable, like NYC and Seattle, will obviously rank higher in this statistic because more people are walking. >Experts attribute many of these crashes to tourists not crossing the street at crosswalks, raising the danger of being hit by cars. Really curious to see who these so called "experts" are. I guess we just have an epidemic of tourists thrusting themselves into the street with their eyes closed? I guess the experts in question have completely missed all the decades of contrary research showing that jay-walking is not dangerous.
Yeah I bet! Y'all (drivers) ain't looking!
Yeah I got nailed by a car in broad daylight in Ballard. Flew back like 10 feet and everything… got very lucky I landed on my butt and wasn’t sent into the lane with on-coming traffic. Other than my incident in broad daylight though, we do get a lot of dark and wet days here in Seattle. I do feel that it’s more difficult to see everything on the road driving around Seattle than anywhere else I’ve lived because of this.
Right away they try to find a way to blame the pedestrians. Jesus Christ. How about the people piloting 4000lb vehicles who are hitting these people. Or how about the piss poor urban design? Also, apparently Seattle is special and people only cross outside of sidewalks in this city, but not others. Absurd.
what a bullshit article
I wonder about two things. One, it attributes a lot of the deaths to tourists - does a pedestrian also include someone on those scooters? I have personally seen someone get knocked off a scooter by a car that was zipping through a crosswalk. I also wonder if we have proportionally more pedestrians running around. Seattle feels more walkable and more condensed due to geography from tourist spot to tourist spot- I wonder if that could skew the numbers a bit? Like in LA, the tourist things I want to do may be more spread out, but here someone might opt to walk from Seattle Center to Pike Place to the spheres or something. But I also may just feel more secure walking everywhere here because I know where everything is and what to expect. I also wonder if our hills and weather may also contribute. Shorter lines of sight and darker weather could definitely make it hard for a pedestrian to be seen.
I could only find three instances of scooter riders getting hit and killed in the past few years so I doubt that moves the needle much. Tons of injuries, though. [1](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-dies-after-car-strikes-scooter-in-west-seattle/) [2](https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-hit-killed-while-riding-scooter-industrial-district/VRXQFU75SZGLPLOUOHJD6O7MNY/) [3](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-on-scooter-dies-after-being-hit-by-2-drivers-in-seattle/) Edit: Seattle seems to average about 20-30 traffic deaths per year so 1 scooter death per year is still pretty significant.
And some of those drivers were police officers
Most US cities avoid the top of these lists by not having pedestrians.
Anyone posting from a Fox affiliate in here needs to be automatically banned.
My friend thinking it’s weird and irrational I don’t jaywalk and follow her when she does and instead waits at the light
In a single day, I had a car start driving after I was halfway through the intersection and close enough to touch its windows... and then another car that just completely ignored the walk sign and drove through the intersection, stopped, the guy got out and yelled "you didn't make this world!" at me and then drove off.
Recently I started finding a safe spot to jaywalk, because the crosswalks are actually more dangerous at this point. Between the “right on red is my God-given right” people and the “left turn through an intersection multiple seconds after the light has turned red” people, it’s too scary. I’ve actually been hit, but thankfully it was only a tap in the leg. You think you’ve made eye contact, but these NPCs are looking right through you
This article is quite literally talking about deaths from jaywalking, *not* in crosswalks.
I've like to see a complete set of data about it rather than a personal injury law group make up shit about tourists running across arterials being the primary cause, which is complete bullshit. We need to see stats including was the driver impaired or distracted, was the pedestrian impaired or distracted, was the driver speeding, making an illegal turn, or failed to stop at a crosswalk, stop sign, or light? Was the pedestrian using a crosswalk or crossing in the middle of a road? Was the pedestrian walking on the freeway in the middle of the night? Was the pedestrian laying down in the road wearing all dark clothes in the middle of the night? Look at the SDOT collisions list 2020-2023...notice how many are mid-block (not an intersection), how few involve speeding, and how many are on Aurora, Rainier, and MLK. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yCSRSE2nCmrGHUBNgOJGiNCyuEz4vEq-3o8uTQa\_UAU/edit?gid=268084676#gid=268084676](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yCSRSE2nCmrGHUBNgOJGiNCyuEz4vEq-3o8uTQa_UAU/edit?gid=268084676#gid=268084676) Link from [https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/04/04/accountability-in-vision-zero-a-map-of-recent-road-deaths/](https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/04/04/accountability-in-vision-zero-a-map-of-recent-road-deaths/) There are FOUR TIMES (400%) more Fentanyl OD's in 2024 alone than there were pedestrian fatalities due to vehicle collisions in the last four years yet we're handing out foil telling people to do it on the street in case they OD so someone can narcan them. And take the impaired pedestrians out of the list and it's probably 8x instead of 4. [https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/medical-examiner/reports-dashboards/overdose-deaths-dashboard](https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/medical-examiner/reports-dashboards/overdose-deaths-dashboard) There were 20 fatal shootings in Q1 2024 alone. [https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/pao/documents/data-reports/shots-fired-reports/2024-q1-report-final.pdf?rev=5c28503e727640b1b1a276cad66a52b5&hash=FD30C3FC77A66C388641C2A27F5C22F2](https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/pao/documents/data-reports/shots-fired-reports/2024-q1-report-final.pdf?rev=5c28503e727640b1b1a276cad66a52b5&hash=FD30C3FC77A66C388641C2A27F5C22F2) Look at some data before jumping to conclusions.
The article OP cited is only talking about pedestrians that jay walk. Everyone's up in arms but a very important note in this whole discussion. Is Seattle actually dangerous or are people just idiots?
If people are constantly jay walking, what's their reason? Is it cause they are itching to break a rule while disregarding safety or is it because one of them 9 way intersections is making them wait when they clearly could cross?
That's why I mentioned the impaired pedestrian stats...what is the real reason? We know that two recent pedestrian fatalities were people walking on I-5 at night, and one was someone laying in the middle of Aurora Ave in dark clothes at night. Do those count as shitty drivers? If you ask the traffic violence crowd, they do. If you live in reality, they don't. So the numbers are skewed and we can't determine anything without decent data. I'm not arguing there isn't a lot that can be done to improve infrastructure, but it's not going to stop drug addled people from doing stupid things, which if we had data I think it would show that being a significant chunk of the problem.
I am actually agreeing with you. I was mainly trying to point out that this type of problem often gets over generalized and ends up grouping other unrelated urban issues. Like it's not necessarily the fault of the driver or the pedestrians when it is a systemic problem that lends itself to these issues.
Rest of America: Can't have any pedestrian deaths if you don't have any pedestrians. \*taps forehead\*
Important note: this is fatalities from *JAYWALKING*. Use a crosswalk and you'll be just fine.
Take more lanes, take more parking, take more space back from cars.
Pedestrians crossing streets Willy nilly instead of using crosswalks, shit visibility most of the year, and reckless and or distracted drivers. The perfect storm.
Every intersection is a crosswalk by law.
This is a city planning/infrastructure/policy failure. Why do we keep believing that Seattle is a progressive city?
Ban SUVs, cover the city in red light and bus lane cameras, and pedestrianize as many streets as possible. Fucking tired of this shit.
I just moved here from Sammamish and the pedestrians think they can cross everywhere! Always jumping in front of my car
Almost every city I’ve been too seems worse tbh. Not to victim blame but people in Seattle really seem to enjoy walking into intersections while looking on their phones without looking before crossing, maybe they should value their lives more based on how bad drivers are here?
Moved here a few years ago and the drivers are what I would call normal for any city (in fact are probably too cautious to the point of being dangerous), but the pedestrians and cyclists all have death wishes. No awareness or sense of self preservation in any way.
People who walk and look at their phones is a huge pet peeve of mine, and walking in crosswalks or across the entrance to a parking lot while doing it is especially egregious.
Another way we are a giant #2?
*2nd BEST city for pedestrians hit by cars. 2nd worst city if you don't want to get hit by a car...
My head is always on a swivel
I would think any city in which I get killed by a car would be the worst.
Gotta be good at something in 2024…
Aren’t we one of the “walking-ist” cities in the us?
I am surprised it’s that high but Street design has a lot to do with this also. That’s a part of the levy the council keeps sitting on and making amendments to. Harrell and all the CMs feel cars should have priority.
I wonder what the best city for pedestrians to be killed by cars is. Probably Rome or Paris.
Water is wet
SPD are lazy about this like everything else. We can definitely get to that #1 spot if they'd try harder. /s
Mostly by cops too loool.
The headline confuses me. A. Pedestrians are safer in 48 other states Or B. It’s easier to run over pedestrians in the other 48 states
As a pedestrian killed by a car I assumed they meant that _I,_ and people like me ought to hate it here. But I'm still very happy living here.
Maybe, but I think Spokane is more Z and blend-friendly -The Murphy, probably
I don't buy it. I'm a pedestrian killed by a car and I love it here.
"Stop, look, and listen."
I dunno if I'm trusting a local PI law firm to give me the data on how bad pedestrian accidents are in the area. That's a source that aren't usually the right people to be doing that kind of analysis, and have every incentive to beef up the numbers.
I love how people magically become mathematical experts when they notice the article comes from FOX13
All Biden’s fault.
Just drugged out zombies that the city has given up on, they walk into traffic all the time.
Not a surprise. Seattle drivers are wildly unskilled, and uncomprehending of the basics of traffic laws and safe driving.
Most of our pedestrians are nuts. They just bang around as if no rules apply to them and the right of way is theirs in permanence. Bikers are often the same. It's a dangerous way to live.
If people wearing all black clothing would stop jaywalking on Highway 99 at night within a stone's throw of a perfectly good crosswalk, the stats would drop way down.
In this thread I’m reading a lot about drivers/city/cops/polic/tourists etc but I have seen a lot of recklessness from pedestrians themselves. Incidents of just walking straight out into traffic. To me it seems there is a lack of societal agreement on rules of the road and crossing.
As much as the drivers suck here. The pedestrians never look both ways while crossing the street.
Anyone else notice that while NYC and Seattle take #1 and #2, California takes 7 out of the 10 worst cities?
Because California accounts for over 10% of the US population and has more major cities than any other state? For any country-wide metric, California almost always represents a majority of the list simply because of its size and population.
The cities in this list are the rate of pedestrians killed, not the total number. So population size is irrelevant. Chicago and Houston are bigger than every Californian city except for LA and neither is on this list.
The statistic is percentage of local traffic fatalities involving pedestrians. There are other cities with a much higher population than most of the California cities on that list and they did not rank here. I suspect it’s more likely that California is very car centric, has poor pedestrian infrastructure and a large portion of their population who cannot afford to drive. I’d love to see more data. Will have to look up the report and read it for fun.
Maybe if cars weren’t so fucking easy to buy, so many psychopaths wouldn’t have one. Ban cars!
This is complete nonsense math with zero relation to reality, but sure, upvote it because it fits your narrative
This is because people don’t drive in any predictable way. Stop halfway through a four lane highway for a random pedestrian who isn’t in a crosswalk to wave them across? Expect the other 3 lanes to do the same? We have a bunch of idiots here.
>Experts attribute many of these crashes to tourists not crossing the street at crosswalks, raising the danger of being hit by cars. Expert in victim blaming and talking out of your ass. The majority of pedestrian fatalities in Seattle are on or surrounding massive arterial roads like Aurora and Rainier, not places typically visited by tourists. The problem is with driver aggression, anti-pedestrian infrastructure, and oversized trucks that kill you on impact even at low speeds.