Death on the Roads: California Traffic Fatality Crisis Far From Over

As one public health crisis subsides, another one—a crisis that has continued for decades and shows no signs of ending—has kept right on claiming more lives in California and across the United States. In the first six months of 2023 alone, more than 2,000 human beings died in California traffic, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

By any standard, the never-ending tragedy of traffic carnage should rate as a public health crisis. More than 2 million human lives have been cut short since 1975 on American roadways. What are we doing about it? 

From early 2020 through the first quarter of 2022, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, traffic fatalities rose steadily with year-on-year increases in seven consecutive quarters, per the NHTSA data. Only in April of 2022 did they start to show some decline. According to NHTSA estimates, the first six months of 2023 saw a 12 percent drop in California road deaths, compared to those months in 2022.

Any decrease in traffic mortality is certainly great news. But the death toll was still brutal. 

Full numbers for 2023 were not yet compiled by the turn of the year, but the estimate for January through June showed 2,061 deaths on California roads. If the numbers for the second half of 2023 were roughly equivalent, that would be well over 4,000 Californians dead—and close to 40,000 nationwide. For what it’s worth, that’s roughly 17 times more Americans than died in the entire 20-year war in Afghanistan. 

Vision Zero and California 

The annual death toll on U.S. roads has remained remarkably consistent for decades, dipping to a low of 32,999 in 2010 then rising back up to 36,355 in 2019 before spiking during the pandemic. 

On a per capita basis, the death rate is lower today than in the 1970s. The U.S. population has added about 110 million people since 1975, while the number of traffic fatalities has remained generally the same. By that measure, American roads have become safer. Nonetheless, the sheer, raw numbers of Americans whose lives end on the roads is staggering no matter how it’s computed.

By any standard, the never-ending tragedy of traffic carnage should rate as a public health crisis. More than 2 million human lives have been cut short since 1975 on American roadways. What are we doing about it? 

In California, 13 cities have adopted the Vision Zero policy, an overall philosophy that originates in Sweden dating back to the 1990s.  The Vision Zero approach holds that traffic deaths are not inevitable and unavoidable, but preventable. 

Words Matter: Not “Accidents” but “Traffic Violence”

Preventing traffic deaths means making changes to the entire traffic system. It’s not simply a matter of drivers changing their behavior. So while the traditional approach is to attempt to perfect driver behavior through punitive measures, education and other means, Vision Zero accepts that humans will make mistakes, and aims to account for their flaws in a systematic approach.

Vision Zero is attempting to change the very language we use to discuss traffic fatalities. The word “accident” is out. Collisions are called “crashes,” because deeming them all “accidents,” according to Vision Zero, “ gives the impression of an ‘oops,’ and that 'it can happen to anyone.’”

That’s why Vision Zero is attempting to change the very language we use to discuss traffic fatalities—and for that matter, non-fatal injuries. The word “accident” is out. Collisions are called “crashes,” because deeming them all “accidents.”, according to Vision Zero, “ gives the impression of an ‘oops,’ and that 'it can happen to anyone'—and with that attitude, we tend to not take responsibility for the choices we make while driving.”

According to the Vision Zero viewpoint, dismissing traffic crashes as “accidents” not only absolves drivers of responsibility but just as importantly, absolves the transportation system itself. According to Vision Zero, local, state and national governments are equally responsible for crashes, due to the flawed traffic systems they create. 

Crashes are described as “traffic violence,” another shift in terminology designed to assign more responsibility to drivers and the systems that enable traffic deaths.

California is ahead of other states in adopting Vision Zero. With more than a dozen here, only 32 cities outside of California have officially made Vision Zero their policy. 

What Else is California Doing to End Traffic Violence?

The state legislature continues to chip away at the traffic violence problem. In 2023, it passed two significant traffic safety laws, which took effect at the start of 2024. One of them, AB413, authored by Assemblymember Alex Lee, a San Jose Democrat, targets a piece of the traffic system that, according to an NHTSA study, is responsible for almost four of every 10 crashes—intersections.

According to data from the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, in 2021, 35 percent of the total 4,285 traffic fatalities in the state happened due to excessive speeds. That’s about 1,500 deaths.

The NHTSA found that, nationwide, about 36 percent of all crashes take place at intersections. Of those, 7.8 percent—more than 60,000 crashes per year—are due to obstructed views. There are numerous ways an intersection view can be blocked, but vehicles parked too close to the corner is certainly a frequent one. Lee’s bill tries to cut down on those obstructions by banning parked vehicles within 20 feet of an intersection or a crosswalk.

The practice of keeping the area approaching an intersection clear is known as “daylighting” and has already been adopted in San Francisco and Alameda County.

AB645: Smile, You're on the Speed Camera

The other new legislative step toward safer roads came in the form of a bill principally authored by Glendale Democrat Laura Friedman that would allow six California cities to operate pilot programs that use “speed cameras” to catch speeding drivers. In 2021 (the most recent year for which data is available), excessive speed was judged to be a factor in 29 percent of traffic fatalities nationwide. That’s 12,330 deaths, from 11,057 crashes attributed to speeding.

Data over the 50 years since the national maximum speed limit was dropped to 55 mph (the executive order by Pres. Richard Nixon was rescinded under Pres. Bill Clinton in 1995), shows that reducing speed limits does indeed result in fewer traffic fatalities.  

In California, speeding-related tragedies were even more frequent. According to data from the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, in 2021, 35 percent of the total 4,285 traffic fatalities in the state happened due to excessive speeds. That’s about 1,500 deaths.

Friedman also authored 2021’s AB43, which allows local governments to lower speed limits without following the state-mandated “85th percentile rule,” which often results in speed limits being raised—because the rule requires speed limits to match the speed at which 85 percent of drivers in a specific area actually travel.

Under Friedman’s new legislation, AB645,  Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Long Beach and San Francisco will be allowed to install the automated cameras—previously prohibited under state law—in “high injury network” areas, that is, areas where the highest percentage of crashes occur. The cameras will also be allowed near schools, and in areas prone to street racing. 

Initially, drivers caught speeding by the cameras will be issued warnings. After the first two months of the five-year pilot program, they’ll be hit with fines, except for first violations for speed between 11 and 15 miles over the posted speed limit. 

The fine for driving at that speed is $50, but as speeds get higher so does the price tag. Getting caught driving over 100 mph carries a fine of $500.

But don’t people ignore speed limits anyway? How can lowering the limits, or enforcing the limits that exist, save lives? 

In fact, data over the 50 years since the national maximum speed limit was dropped to 55 mph (the executive order by Pres. Richard Nixon was rescinded under Pres. Bill Clinton in 1995), shows that reducing speed limits does indeed result in fewer traffic fatalities.  

According to research conducted by the NHTSA back in 1981, and more recently by the AAA Auto Club in 2023, roads where speed limits had been lowered experienced reduced numbers of traffic deaths. Conversely, fatalities rose where limits were raised. In the years 1974 through 1979, the first six years of the 55 mph speed limit, the NHTSA study found that an estimated  41,951 fewer people died on the highways than would have if the speed limit had not been lowered.

Death on Foot: a Startling Spike in Pedestrian Fatalities

Americans have always enjoyed declaring, “We’re number one!” Sadly, the U.S. is indeed number one in one grim category—traffic fatalities. According to a New York Times report based on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. is one of only three countries in the OECD that saw a rise in traffic fatalities in 2020 compared to the previous three-year’s average. At five percent, in fact, the U.S. saw the biggest spike, and that trend continued in 2021 when 13 percent more pedestrians, a total of 7,388, were killed by moving vehicles in the U.S.  than in the previous year. 

The American love affair with really big cars appears to play a significant role in rising pedestrian deaths. Big cars weigh more, meaning they strike with greater force than smaller vehicles.

Pedestrian deaths nationwide climbed by a staggering 77 percent from 2010 to 2021, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. All other traffic deaths rose by 25 percent over the same time period.

In California, the number of pedestrians killed in traffic rose 10 percent from 2019 to 2022, per the GHSA data—though from 2021 to 2022 those fatalities saw a slight drop of 1.8 percent, with an estimated 1,100 fatalities in 2022, down by 20 from the previous year. 

The GHSA estimated a national total of 7,508 people killed by cars while on foot in 2022, the highest death toll since 1981 saw 7,837.

In December, 2023, the New York Times did a study, trying to get to the bottom of the startling spike in pedestrian deaths over the past decade-and-a-half. The Times investigation found that three-fourths of pedestrian deaths happened at night. 

“Nothing resembling this pattern has occurred in other comparably wealthy countries,” wrote Times reporters Emily Badger, Ben Blatt and Josh Katz. “In places like Canada and Australia, a much lower share of pedestrian fatalities occurs at night, and those fatalities—rarer in number —have generally been declining, not rising.”

The Times report does not come to any definitive conclusions as to why the American night is disproportionately dangerous for pedestrians. But major factors the report speculates may be at fault arethe rise of smartphones, which have caused an increase in distracted driving, and the fact that U.S. roadways are generally engineered for the times when most driving occurs—namely the daylight hours.

But those factors also exist in other countries that have not seen the same rise in pedestrian deaths. So what is it? The answer, according to the Times report, may lie in that stick shift between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. 

“Just 1 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold this year in the U.S. had manual transmissions, according to the online car-shopping resource Edmunds,” the Times reported. “In Europe, manual transmissions are declining in popularity as a share of new light vehicles sold. But they still make up about 70 to 75 percent of cars on the road.” 

Manual transmissions require that the driver keep both hands occupied, the report notes, while manual transmissions free up a driver’s hands to do things like mess around with a phone.

SUVs and Trucks: Pedestrian Killers 

The American love affair with really big cars also appears to play a significant role in rising pedestrian deaths. Big cars weigh more, meaning they stroke with greater force than smaller vehicles. The percentage of cars bought and sold in the U.S. since 2009 that were sedans, as opposed to larger SUVs and trucks, dropped from 40 to 30 and may hit 15 percent by the end of the current decade, according to Smart Growth America. 

The height, in addition to weight, of larger cars also makes them more deadly, according to Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute (a think tank founded by Pres. Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

“That has a terrible effect on visibility, making it very difficult for people who are driving these cars to see,” Freemark told New York Magazine in 2017. “It also means that people who are struck by these vehicles are struck in a worse place, which is to say it’s much better if you have to be hit by a car to be hit in the legs than it is to be hit in the chest or the head if you want to survive. And as a result of the rise of these SUVs with large hoods, we’re just seeing a lot more people getting hit in a bad way and a lot more fatalities as a result of that.”

The best-selling vehicle in the U.S. is the Ford F-150 pickup truck, which has a hood that rises approximately 55 inches, 4.6 feet, above the road. In Europe, SUVs and trucks are smaller. In France the best-selling vehicle is the the Peugeot 208, an SUV whose entire height is 56 inches.

“You have new cars in Europe that have hoods that are designed not to kill pedestrians, but to essentially save the pedestrians’ lives when they’re hit by them,” Freemark said in the New York Magazine interview. “We have no such requirements in the United States.”

What is the U.S. doing to reduce pedestrian deaths, then? Apparently, not much. In California, the legislature actually passed a law in 2022 making jaywalking legal, allowing pedestrians to step into the street anywhere, outside of crosswalks, even into oncoming traffic. Data was not yet available on whether the law resulted in a greater number of pedestrian deaths.