Right of Way: How Racial and Class Disparities Created a Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

Presented by: the Security and Sustainability Forum

In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths. In 2018 alone more than 6,000 pedestrians were killed while walking in America. Yet, despite the increase in deaths, the tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately, the victims are immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten. The media barely covers these tragedies as they victims often in low-income neighborhoods.

What appears at first to be “accidentals”, under greater scrutiny, reveals itself to be a predictable, stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve. Why are these people dying? What’s necessary to reframe the problem, acknowledge racism and classism in our public response to safety, and energize road safety advocates? How can we create programs, policies, and movements that respond to the epidemic?