I’m waiting for July to end so I can do my monthly data pull from Texas’ CRIS site and I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent report from the Governors Highway Safety Association that stated that the number of pedestrians killed by vehicles has reached a 40-year high. In 2022, 7,508 people out for a stroll were struck and killed by vehicles in America. That’s 20 people killed per day.
In San Antonio, 72 pedestrians were killed by drivers in 2022, with another 630 experiencing some sort of injury. All told, 1,154 pedestrians were involved in some sort of vehicular crash, coming out to 3 pedestrians a day having their lives disrupted some sort of vehicular incident.
3 pedestrians a day being struck or having a close call with a vehicle doesn’t sound like a lot on the face of things. As discussed before, San Antonio is a car-centric city, where owning car is essentially a necessity for getting around. Cars are all over the city and consistently choke the freeways which bisect San Antonio with congestion and pollution.
However, San Antonio has committed to Vision Zero and published their Action Plan in 2016. Unfortunately, the Action Plan does not have a target date for eliminating pedestrian and cyclist fatalities on city streets. This toothless document gives city officials something to point to as evidence that they’re taking the issue seriously, but is really filed away along with numerous other “Plans” that the city produces but then forgets. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and serious injuries haven’t decreased in any appreciable manner since the Action Plan was adopted, despite a handful of Vision Zero safety projects completed by the City.
I decided to look at some of the contributing factors noted by police in their CR-3 crash reports for 2022. Many crashes had multiple contributing factors noted in the CR-3 reports for each type of crash severity. One contributing factor that caught my eye was the one titled “Pedestrian failed to yield right of way to vehicle”, which was noted 20 times as the sole factor. Just looking at my spreadsheet it’s hard to get a clear picture of what happened to these unfortunate pedestrians and how they were in the wrong. Perhaps they were crossing in the middle of the street because there wasn’t a pedestrian crosswalk in a convenient spot for them.
The lowest speed limit indicated on the streets in which these types of crashes occurred is 30mph (5302 De Zavala Rd; screenshot below). The highest speed limit was 65mph and crashes occurred on IH-410 and US-90, both highways in San Antonio. The cars in the screenshot below are driving in an area engineered for cars to go as fast as possible – just another example of how our streets are dangerously engineered for maximum speed to the detriment of pedestrians.
This probably isn’t surprising, but other contributing factors that played a role in every type of crash severity in San Antonio was “Driver Inattention” and “Failure to Control Speed”. Of the 72 pedestrian deaths in 2022, 27 of them occurred on streets where the speed limit was 35mph or slower, nearly 38% of total deaths. It’s a clear indication that speed limit, especially in residential and neighborhood areas, need to be reduced drastically.
As of July 21, 2023, 27 pedestrians have been fatally injured walking in San Antonio, 55 have suffered serious injuries, and overall, 458 pedestrians have been in some sort of incident with a vehicle. This continues a dangerous trend for San Antonians who wish to get around the city in ways other than a car. If the City is serious about their Vision Zero plan, then much more strenuous and quick work needs to be done to make San Antonio much more inclusive for all modes of travel.
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