Tag: pedestrians

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Complete Streets Policy Safety & Education

Every Month is Pedestrian Safety Month

October is Pedestrian Safety Month where safety groups roll out tepid safety messaging and do a modest amount of short-term traffic enforcement in a handful of Michigan cities. This approach certainly hasn’t led to reduced pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries, which have actually increased over the past decade. 

What is much more effective than education or enforcement? It’s engineering — building Complete Streets that can self-regulate motorists and reduce speeding 24 hours a day. This is critical since vehicle speed largely determines the degree of injury suffered by pedestrians and bicyclists in crashes. (Vehicle design is a significant determinant as well.)

If there is any doubt that Detroit has speeding problem, just consider Detroiters’ overwhelming demand for speed humps to slow motorists on residential streets. This demand has led Mayor Mike Duggan to shift $11.5 million in road funding to install significantly more speed humps in 2021 — perhaps more than any other major U.S. city.

I’m not sure there’s been any innovation in this city that has been received with more enthusiasm than the speed humps

Mayor Mike Duggan Press Conference, September 16, 2020
YearSpeed humps installedResident requests
201832
20195433,000
20201,2008,000
20214,500 (planned)

Of course speed humps only work on streets were speed limits are 25 MPH or less. Other streets require different Complete Street designs to reduce speeding, e.g. bike lanes, bumps outs, narrower travel lanes, street trees.

Reframing bike lanes as speed humps for bigger roads is invaluable. Bike lanes help reduce speeding and increase safety for everyone, not just bicyclists.

Speed Limits

Another issue we’re working on is how speed limits are set in Michigan.

One major reason the auto industry wrote the “Rules of the Road” in the 1920s was to have higher speed limits and restrict other users, predominantly pedestrians, from using these roads. Higher travel speeds gave motorist a clear advantage over other travel modes and helped sell more cars.

Michigan’s speed limit laws still reflect this history with minimums limits for speed limits and by having the 85th fastest motorist under ideal conditions determine the speed limit — not traffic experts or local governments. This leads to higher speed limits that don’t consider road design, crash history, local land use, and pedestrian and bicyclist use. What’s equally bad is that when roads are reconstructed, they are designed to accomodate the speed limit rather than what is appropriate and safe for the local community.

One local example of this is W. Fort Street near Schaefer. It used to have a 35 MPH speed limit. The Michigan State Police measured the 85th fastest motorist at a bit over 40 MPH, so they raised the speed limit to 45 MPH. They didn’t consider that the neighborhood to the south crossed the road to get to Kemeney Rec Center and park on the north. After the speed limit changed, 8-year-old Brandyn Starks was hit and killed while crossing the street to get to the park.

We’re part of a stakeholder group that’s helping shape current legislation (HB 4733) to provide a modest amount of flexibility in setting speed limits. This change is very much inline with recommendation from the NTSB and many other national organizations. We look forward to providing future updates on this bill.

What about 20 MPH speed limits?

There is a push in many cities around the world to reduce residential speed limits from 25 MPH to 20 MPH. This change is being promoted to help reduce pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries. Recent studies show that lower speed limits do reduce motorist speeds.

However, Michigan law prohibits setting Detroit’s residential speed limits below 25 MPH through January 2024. The Michigan State Police will be doing motorist speed studies on these local roads across the state. We anticipate they will more likely want to raise this 25 MPH minimum rather than lower it by 2024.

Of course, if the legislature takes no action before that time, residential speed limits could be set based on the 85th fastest motorist…

Categories
Complete Streets Safety & Education

Detroit Public Lighting Improvements Reducing Pedestrian Fatalities

  • 48 fatalities in dark, unlighted conditions from 2013-2014; only 2 from 2016-2017

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Traffic Safety Facts report shows Detroit’s 2015 pedestrian fatality rate of 6.79 deaths per 100,000 residents was the highest among U.S. cities with populations over a half million.  This far outpaced the other cities and was quadruple Chicago’s rate.

Nationally, pedestrian fatality rates have “skyrocketed” according to a recent Detroit Free Press article. While they’ve increased 46% since 2009, Detroit’s pedestrian fatality rate has been in decline since 2016. By 2017, the city’s pedestrian fatality rate had dropped nearly 40% to 4.16 deaths per 100,000. We examined the police report data to determine why.

From 2008 to 2010, there were 4.5 fatalities annually in dark, unlighted conditions. By 2013 and 2014, that annual average had jumped to 24.

According to the Detroit Public Lighting Authority’s 2014 report, “Detroit’s street lighting system was broken. Street lights haven’t been maintained for decades and roughly 40% of the existing street lights were not working.” The Authority began rebuilding the system in February 2014, and by December of 2016, had completed the installation of 65,000 new LED lights.

As these street lights were installed, pedestrian fatalities in dark, unlighted areas dropped drastically from 24 in 2014 to just 1 in 2017.  As expected, the data shows an increase in fatalities in dark, lighted areas during this time, however there was still an overall decrease.

We did not see similar decreases in nearby cities such as Hamtramck or Highland Park.

In fact, Detroit’s significant drop in pedestrian deaths is helping mask a dramatic pedestrian fatality increase occurring statewide. According to the Michigan Traffic Crash Facts web site, since 2009 pedestrian fatalities:

  • Within Detroit have decreased by 16%
  • Outside of Detroit have increased by 47%

Based on our analysis, the public lighting improvements appear to be the primary factor behind Detroit’s dropping fatality rate. Certainly no pedestrian fatalities or serious injury crashes are acceptable, but city’s safety data is improving. We expect this trend to continue as additional Complete Streets treatments, such as road diets, bike lanes and other pedestrian infrastructure improvements reduce motor vehicle speeding and pedestrian exposure leading to a safer, healthier, and more walkable city.

PDF of safety data and chart

Categories
Complete Streets Safety & Education

Whose safety? The race of Detroit bicycle & pedestrian fatalities

Studies show that building Complete Streets designed for safer bicyclist and pedestrian travel saves lives. Complete Streets even reduce crashes for motorists by reducing bad behavior.

Studies show that adding on-road bike lanes can cut bicycle-vehicle collisions in half. Bike lanes, bump outs, and medians also reduce pedestrian collisions by effectively shortening the crosswalks.

Complete Streets are invaluable in Detroit given the large number of people dying on our roads each year.

In 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found Detroit has 6.79 pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents — the most of any major U.S. city. That 58% higher than second place Dallas with 4.31. Absolutely unacceptable.

They also reported Detroit’s bicycle fatality rate at 1.48 per 100,000 residents, which is for 26th among the 34 largest U.S. cities. Since bicycle fatalities fluctuate more year to year, we’re not sure how valuable this ranking is.

NHTSA also keeps all road fatalities in their Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) that includes race. We thought it would be interesting to see how bicycle and pedestrian fatalities aligned with Detroit’s overall demographics.

As it turns out, they align very closely.

All Residents (100)Fatalities
Black83%84%
White8%8%
Latino7%5%

Looking at just bicyclists, there were 20 fatalities in Detroit between 2010 and 2016. Among them, 17 were Black (89%), 1 was Mexican, 1 was White/Non-Hispanic, and 1 was unknown.

The average age among these fatalities? 46 years old. 73% are men though that is trending downward.

Some have said we’re building Complete Streets and bike lanes for the new Detroit — a more white, more young. That’s not the case. We’re building them for all, but especially to decrease road fatalities.

The data shows we have a great opportunity to do that.

Categories
Safety & Education

Detroit Needs Complete and Safer Streets Now

Worst US Cities for Pedestrian FatalitiesLast month the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released their 2013 Traffic Safety Facts for Pedestrians report.

The statistics are grim. Every two hours a pedestrian is killed in the U.S. Fourteen percent of all road fatalities are pedestrians and that continues to trend upwards.

Among U.S. cities above 500,000 people, Detroit has the highest pedestrian fatality rate. It’s not even close. With 6.1 fatalities per 100,000 people, Detroit is well above second-place Jacksonville at 3.92.

Sadly enough, Detroit fatality rate has risen every year since 2010 when it was “only” 3.2 fatalities per 100,000.

This is a major public safety issue that everyone has a role in solving.

  • Last year Detroit City Council updated and modernized its traffic ordinances – a good first step. We expect them to take up a Complete Streets ordinance this year that makes the city consider all modes of transportation when reconstructing roadst.
  • To its credit, the Department of Public Works has been building Complete Streets projects in high-crash areas. As the statistics show, more work needs to be done. Even adding more bike lanes and road diets can help reduce speeding and make it easier for pedestrians to cross Detroit’s often wide streets.
  • Improvements in public lighting should also help reduce pedestrian crashes. Since 2010, over 80% of Detroit’s pedestrian fatalities have occurred at night and nearly half of those were in unlit areas.
  • We urge Mayor Mike Duggan to join the other 177 cities that have already signed on to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Mayors’ Challenge. This is a nationwide effort to create more seamless, convenient and safe biking and walking communities. The city with the worst pedestrian fatality rate needs to be at this table.
  • Residents and businesses should commit to clearing snow and ice from their sidewalks. During the summer, sidewalks should be cleared of debris and vegetation trimmed for good sight lines. Pedestrians are more likely to use sidewalks when they feel safe on them.
  • impact-of-speed-on-pedestrians1And lastly, all motorists need to use extra caution around pedestrians and bicyclists. Everyone needs to drive the speed limit. A “harmless” five MPH over is not harmless. At 20 MPH, a pedestrian has a 5% chance of being killed. It’s 45% at 30 MPH and 85% at 40 MPH. Unlike the Metro Detroit suburbs, most city streets have low posted speed limits. We’d like to see more people following them. Speed does kill.

Detroit has the basic underlying structure for a very walkable city. We just need to make sure it’s safe for everyone in every neighborhood. It’s about quality of life, social equity, and public health – and it needs to be everyone’s priority.

We submitted the above commentary nearly a couple weeks ago to one of Detroit’s major papers. That paper never returned our emails or voice mail, so we decided to publish it ourselves. That paper did publish their own commentary on the “full-blown public safety emergency” of potholes and bridges — neither of which can match the 312 pedestrians and 26 bicyclists killed on Detroit roads during the past decade.