In the United States, 7,314 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2023, accounting for 18% of all traffic fatalities that year. Preliminary data for 2024 shows a slight improvement, with 7,148 pedestrian deaths, a 4.3% decline. The first half of 2025 suggests an even sharper drop of nearly 11% compared to the same period the year before. Still, the overall trend over the past decade has been deeply troubling.
A Decade of Rising Deaths
Between 2013 and 2022, the U.S. pedestrian death rate climbed 50%, rising from 1.55 to 2.33 deaths per 100,000 people. During the same period, most other wealthy nations saw their rates fall by a median of about 25%. By 2022, every one of the 27 other high-income countries tracked by the CDC had a lower pedestrian death rate than the United States.
The gap is striking. The U.S. rate of 2.33 per 100,000 is roughly three times the median rate (0.73) of those peer countries. Norway’s rate stood at just 0.17, the United Kingdom’s at 0.59, and Japan’s at 0.93. The recent year-over-year declines in U.S. fatalities are encouraging, but they follow years of steep increases that left the country a clear outlier among its peers.
Where and When Crashes Happen
Three out of four fatal pedestrian crashes happen outside of intersections. Only 16% occur at intersections themselves. The remaining crashes take place on shoulders, in parking zones, on sidewalks, or in medians. This pattern points to a built environment problem: long stretches of road without safe crossing points, especially on wide, high-speed arterials common in suburban areas.
Darkness is the single biggest environmental risk factor. Seventy-six percent of pedestrian fatalities occur at night. Poor street lighting, limited sidewalk infrastructure, and higher speeds on roads that empty out after rush hour all contribute. If you regularly walk along roads after dark, wearing reflective or light-colored clothing and using well-lit routes meaningfully reduces your exposure to this risk.
How Speed Changes Survival
A pedestrian’s chance of surviving a crash depends heavily on how fast the vehicle is moving at impact. Research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety puts hard numbers on this relationship:
- 23 mph: 10% risk of death
- 32 mph: 25% risk of death
- 42 mph: 50% risk of death, a coin flip
- 50 mph: 75% risk of death
- 58 mph: 90% risk of death
The risk of severe injury climbs even faster. At just 31 mph, there’s a 50% chance of serious injury. This is why urban speed limits matter so much. The difference between a 25 mph zone and a 40 mph zone isn’t just 15 miles per hour of speed. It’s the difference between a crash that’s survivable and one that likely isn’t.
Larger Vehicles Pose Greater Risk
The shift toward SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. vehicle fleet has changed the math for pedestrians. A systematic review published in the journal Injury Prevention found that being struck by an SUV or light truck, compared to a standard passenger car, increases a pedestrian’s odds of dying by 44% for adults. For children, the picture is worse: kids face an 82% higher chance of dying when hit by an SUV or light truck versus a car.
The youngest children are most vulnerable. Those under 10 years old experienced a 130% increase in the odds of death when struck by an SUV compared to a car. The reason is partly geometric. The higher, flatter front ends of SUVs and trucks strike a child’s head and torso directly, while a car’s lower hood tends to push a pedestrian up and over, distributing the force differently.
Alcohol’s Role in Fatal Crashes
Alcohol involvement is a persistent factor in pedestrian fatalities, and it cuts both ways. In roughly half of all fatal pedestrian crashes involving adults, either the driver, the pedestrian, or both had been drinking. About 40% of adult pedestrians killed in these crashes were themselves intoxicated at the time of the collision. Impaired judgment affects a person’s ability to gauge traffic gaps, stay on sidewalks, and cross at safe locations, which partly explains why so many fatal crashes happen outside intersections and after dark.
What’s Driving the U.S. Problem
No single factor explains why the United States loses more than 7,000 pedestrians a year while peer nations lose far fewer per capita. It’s a combination of reinforcing risks: faster roads, larger vehicles, more nighttime walking on roads without sidewalks, and road designs that prioritize vehicle throughput over pedestrian safety. Many U.S. arterial roads were built in the mid-20th century with virtually no pedestrian infrastructure, yet today they run through areas dense enough that people walk along and across them regularly.
Cities that have invested in proven countermeasures have seen results. Leading-edge pedestrian intervals at traffic signals (giving walkers a head start before cars get a green light), better street lighting, raised crosswalks, and road diets that reduce lanes and lower speeds all reduce fatalities. The preliminary 2025 data, showing the largest year-over-year decline in 15 years of tracking, suggests that some combination of these efforts and broader driving pattern changes may be gaining traction. Whether that trend holds will depend on sustained investment in the infrastructure that keeps people on foot alive.