Spotlight on Pedestrian Safety

FHWA's aggressive approach to reducing the fatality rate in 13 States and 5 municipalities is showing promising results.

Focus cities have installed high-visibility crosswalks, such as this one in Montclair, NJ, in a number of locations to improve pedestrian safety.

For the past 7.5 years, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has been trying to aggressively reduce pedestrian deaths by focusing extra resources on the States and cities with the highest numbers or rates of pedestrian fatalities. In recent years, 13 States experienced pedestrian fatalities above 150 per year and above the national rate of 2.5 per 100,000 population. In 2003 those States were Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas. An increase in Nevada's rate later added it to the list, while Michigan dropped off in 2007. In addition, five cities had the highest number of fatalities per year: Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; and Phoenix, AZ. Washington, DC, later went on the list, and Detroit dropped off (only to rejoin in 2011).

To address this challenge, FHWA's Focused Approach to Pedestrian Safety project began with a memorandum dated May 2004 outlining the goal of reducing pedestrian fatalities by 10 percent by the year 2008 (goal later changed to 2011).