In 1995, 543 people were killed while on foot on an Interstate highway. Pedestrian fatalities on Interstates have claimed an average of 610 lives each year since 1989. Nearly 10 percent of all the nation's pedestrian fatalities occur on Interstate highways, even though the Interstate system comprises only about one percent of the nation's total road mileage. Furthermore, 12 percent of all Interstate traffic fatalities are pedestrians. These are alarming numbers, especially given that pedestrians are legally restricted from entering Interstate highways in all but ten states. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety's staff research analyst Christopher Johnson looked at a three-year sample of 400 police accident reports detailing Interstate pedestrian fatalities in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina to find out what pedestrians are doing on the Interstates and what factors are contributing to the crashes. Nearly one-third of the crashes from the sample involved "unintended pedestrians": people pushing or working on a vehicle, involved in a previous crash, or walking on the shoulder, all situations in which the average motorist could be involved. Forty percent of the crashes involved pedestrians crossing or entering a lane of traffic. These cases usually involved people exhibiting irrational or suicidal behaviour, or simply trying to travel the shortest distance from one location to another. Less than 3 percent of the pedestrians in the sample were reported to be hitch hiking. Construction workers were involved in less than one percent of the crashes. The tables in this publication summarize the different crash-types from the sample and relative percentages. (Author/publisher)
Abstract