Is RVA really a danger zone for pedestrians?
You’ve probably heard about Richmond being #20 on the list of most dangerous cities for pedestrians. I decided to look into that claim because it seemed a bit dubious.
You’ve probably heard about Richmond being #20 on the list of most dangerous cities for pedestrians. I decided to look into that claim because it seemed a bit dubious.
Transportation for America claims in its Dangerous by Design study, released earlier this month, that “from 2000 through 2009, more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month.” So where did they get their information, and why did Richmond score so poorly?
Following the link trail, you’ll end up here and here. The trail runs cold on carinsurance.com (that sounds trustworthy, right?) without providing a good explanation of what the data means, how it was gathered, or where it comes from.
To the Googles!
Searching for “Pedestrian Danger Index,” the metric used in the study, will take you to the origin of the report from the Transportation for America site. While the “T4A” group isn’t any sort of official US government group, they are a “policy organization primarily focused on building grassroots support for — and enacting — federal, state, and local government laws that support progressive transportation and land use policy.” Here’s a bit of what they have to say:
Nationwide, pedestrians account for nearly 12 percent of total traffic deaths. But state departments of transportation have largely ignored pedestrian safety from a budgetary perspective, allocating only about 1.5 percent of available federal funds to projects that retrofit dangerous roads or create safe alternatives.
The particular piece of data that nets Richmond its #20 spot in the list is this:
In the 2001-09 decade, there were 167 pedestrian fatalities for a rate of 1.4 fatalities per 100,000 people per year.
That’s certainly nothing to scoff at, but I still wasn’t done digging. Underneath the giant table of data you can input a ZIP code or city name and the site will show you a map of the nearby pedestrian fatalities during the 2001-09 decade that their study covers.
Scary, huh? Let’s zoom in a bit. You’ll notice something striking pretty much immediately.
Despite being labeled as as the 20th most dangerous city for pedestrians, it turns that that most of the pedestrian fatalities don’t even occur within the city! Instead they’re almost entirely kept to the surrounding neighborhoods, suburbs, and counties. The City of Richmond proper accounted for only 35 pedestrian fatalities in the ten year span of the study, and as the above map shows most of those are outside of the “walkable” areas of town.
In fact, the places where people are most likely to be walking around appear to be the safest.
The devil is truly in the details — particularly, how you frame a conversation about data will skew how it’s perceived. If you slap a 60-mile radius around Richmond and include all those fatalities in the statistics, yes, Richmond seems dangerous. But the reality of the situation for most city dwellers isn’t quite what an ominous “20th most dangerous” label purports.
photo by iboy_daniel
-
Recommend this
on Facebook -
Report an error
-
Subscribe to our
Weekly Digest
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
T4America never makes the claim that Richmond is the 20th most dangerous city, it states the Richmond metro area is the 20th most dangerous. The metro areas are probably the same metropolitan statistical areas that are defined by the Census.
Nicely done. Thanks for clarifying and not letting people give the city a bad name for false info!
Doesn’t surprise me, we have no sidewalks/crosswalks in the burbs!
I notice that you have also skewed your results. The red flag denoting Richmond is centered near Maymont Park, not over the capitol building or Richmond’s “downtown”. The cluster of pedestrian death flags to the right of your map is much closer to the center of Richmond.
@Jane:
I moved the map up a bit for the sake of relevancy. There are a few markers down along Hull St near where it meets up with Midlo Tnpk, but I think that’s more the city limits when compared to Near West End.
In regards to the small cluster of markers on the right, only two are actually downtown (one’s on E Broad and the other’s on N 14th) while the rest are in Church Hill. Those five really are the only ones (minus a couple on I95 itself) out there.
I was trying to show areas where people walk the most and how there are very few fatalities in said locations, so I centered the map thusly.
I linked to the interactive map in the post but it’s not super apparent, so here it is again.
Considering nobody in Richmond (or Virginia) knows or cares that it’s a state law that all cars stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk, well… I almost get run over in the city on a regular basis. I almost got run over by a police car one day, which means even the guys enforcing the laws don’t care that they’re supposed to stop for pedestrians. Stupid.
It’s worth noting that the goal of the Transportation for America, titled “Dangerous by Design,” is to point out the problems associated with roads without any sidewalks or other accommodations for pedestrians. It makes sense that downtown Richmond would be safer, but that doesn’t mean that Richmond city as a whole is safe for pedestrians.
Your article failed to acknowledge that the percentage of traffic deaths in Richmond city that were pedestrians for that period was 19.4%, which is a bit lower than Henrico and a bit higher than Chesterfield, to take the two biggest counties in the Richmond metro area. Even more importantly, the fatality rate per 100,000 population is slightly higher in Richmond than it is in either of those two counties. If you look at the statistics in that way, Richmond city is not safer than the counties. It may be that relatively speaking the fatalities in the city occurred in places that are not good for walking, but that’s precisely the point of the report.
Good discussion already going on here, but I did just want to emphasize that our report ranks metro regions, rather than just cities. It’s nearly impossible to parse out cities from metro areas in the data, and we definitely want to call attention to the most dangerous areas, which are overwhelmingly in the inner and outer suburbs along roads that might have been country roads at some point but are now 4 or 6 lane highways with little accommodation for pedestrians.
While a great share of traffic deaths in Richmond proper are pedestrians (greater compared to the suburbs, actually), your chances of being hit while walking are far greater in the outlying areas. More people walk in the city, with fewer deaths per trip on foot. Fewer people walk out in the exurbs, but those that do face a far greater chance of being struck per trip taken on foot.
Anyway, just wanted to toss that in the discussion. Thanks!
I am visiting from San Diego CA, staying near Three Chopt/Lauderdale and decided to walk to ‘the mall’ ( name unknown) across Broad St I found no sidewalks in some areas and on only one side of most streets with an appalling lack of crosswalks and walk signals. I walked along Broad from one end of that mall to the other, encountered 3 major signaled intersections and not even ONE crosswalk. I ended up running across midway between intersections.
I definitely found this area to be unsafe/unfriendly for walking and heaven forbid if one wanted to travel by bicycle!! Scary unsafe.
Is Richmond a danger zone for pedestrians? It proved to be this past weekend.
Pedestrian Killed Friday Night
The downtown, vcu, fan area needs more bike lanes, and the speed limits in the fan areas should be dropped from 25 to 20. drivers need to CALM DOWN. give bicyclist a bit more room and slow down.
At the same time, Bicyclist need to start following more of the rules of the road, and TAKE THE HEADPHONES OUT OF YOUR EARS AND LISTEN FOR OTHER TRAFFIC BEHIND YOU.
I don’t mind bikers not stopping at stop signs, but at least open your eyes and YIELD.
I’ve been riding a bike in richmond for 20 years, i’ve been hit by two cars. One refused to yield to me in the Lee traffic circle, and the other turned right from the left lane straight into me.
i’ve never seen it this dangerous, largely due to impatient drivers.
also, if you are on a bike, make it easier for yourself and stay off the busy streets like Main, Monument, Broad, etc.. and stick with calmer streets.
I know it’s difficult because motorists like to FLY down the fan side streets with no regard for anyones safety, only how quickly they can get away from all these pesky pedestrians and back to the suburbs.