Since 2004, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has been trying to aggressively reduce pedestrian deaths by focusing extra resources on the 13 States and 5 cities with the highest numbers or rates of pedestrian fatalities. This article discusses this initiative and highlights several case studies that illustrate the program’s progress to date. The FHWA encouraged the affected States and cities to develop and implement pedestrian safety action plans that would reduce pedestrian fatalities by 10%. The FHWA published a guide to help state and local officials develop their plans and offered free technical assistance and training to each of the focus states and cities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been instrumental in this effort by providing grant funding to promote pedestrian safety education and enforcement programs in five of the focus areas: Chicago, Detroit, Florida, New Mexico, and North Carolina. A 2009 evaluation of the program was positive and documented tangible changes in the focus States and cities as a result of the technical assistance provided in recent years. A more comprehensive evaluation conducted in 2010 included a look at all of the FHWA focus areas and turned up additional encouraging results. In the states that had not been designated as pedestrian focus states, pedestrian fatalities between 2002 and 2008 decreased 4.7% and the overall fatality rate decreased 11.2%. During that same period, the fatalities decreased 12.1%, and the fatality rate decreased by 21.8% in the pedestrian focus states. Arizona; Pinellas County, Florida; and New York City are highlighted in the article as individual success stories. Moving forward, FHWA will be making a few changes to their focused approach to safety, including more emphasis on cities rather than states. They also will take into consideration results from a recent study that recommended that the FHWA work with Federal partners to give state and local planners a more comprehensive look at all bicycle-pedestrian issues rather than concentrating solely on safety planning. (Author/publisher)
Abstract