2018 the deadliest year for pedestrians in nearly 30 years, study says
If you find that walking or biking through in parts of Philadelphia isn't very safe, you're not imagining things.
A recent national study found that 2018 was the deadliest year for pedestrians in the US since the 1990s.
"I'm not surprised," said Johnny Izraelski of South Philadelphia. "The way people drive around the city is horrible."
New Jersey placed in the top 15 with 73 deaths. While Pennsylvania ranked in the top 10 for fatalities with a total of 90, a 41 percent increase over the previous year. The research was conducted by the Governors Highway Safety Association.
"Terrible," said Carl Leo of Pennsauken. "They almost clipped me a couple of times."
According to PennDOT, these are some of the intersections in Southeast Pennsylvania that see the most incidents involving pedestrians:
- The McDade Boulevard corridor in Delaware county from Fairview Road to Ashland ave with 35 pedestrian crashes from 2012 to 2016.
- The Landsdowne Avenue corridor in Upper Darby from Marshall Road to West Chester Pike with 17 pedestrian crashes from 2012 to 2016.
- And, the worst stretch of road, the Allegheny ave corridor from Ridge to Aramingo Avenues with 139 incidents from 2013 to 2017.
Although there was an increase statewide in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia's fatalities fell by 15 percent between 2016 to 2017.
The report credits Vision Zero, a project originally adopted in Sweden.
It aims to completely eliminate traffic-related deaths by increasing enforcement and improving roadways among other things.
"It's really about reimagining how we look at safety and saying that there shouldn't be any reason that anybody dies on our roadways whether they are biking walking driving riding transit," said Kelley Yemen, Director of Complete Streets with the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability.
But Kelly Yemen admits that with over 300 traffic deaths and severe injuries on Philadelphia streets in 2017 alone that there's still a lot of work to do.
