Behind the decline in pedestrian fatalities: Urban transportation systems are reshaping safety baselines with the help of data and design.

After years of skyrocketing, pedestrian deaths on U.S. roads have finally seen a significant drop. Preliminary 2025 data shows that the number of pedestrians killed by motor vehicles fell to 6,732, a 7% year-over-year decrease—the largest annual decline since this indicator began falling in 2022. However, this figure is still about 22% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, meaning the safety baseline of urban transportation systems has not truly returned.

In the latest Spotlight on Highway Safety: Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), an even more noteworthy signal is that data itself is becoming a key variable in transforming urban traffic governance logic. Anderson Abernathy, President of Michelin Mobility Intelligence North America, stated bluntly during the report's release: "Optimism alone doesn't save lives." He believes the next phase centers on providing traffic decision-makers with tools that can identify crash risks and determine priorities—and the core of these tools is real-time data.

The Data Gap: From Annual Statistics to Real-Time Insights

Currently, U.S. pedestrian fatality data primarily relies on police reports, hospital records, and insurance claims, often with a lag of months or even a year. GHSA calls for the integration of more real-time data sources: real-time records from first responders at crash scenes, vehicle telemetry data, drug and alcohol test results, and speed data. Paula Raymond, Director of Behavioral Science at toXcel, notes that speed data is "extremely important" because speeding is directly linked to crash severity.

But the value of data goes far beyond statistics. When cities can identify high-risk intersections, peak time periods, and vehicle type distributions in real time, traffic engineers can design targeted interventions—such as optimizing signal timing, adding physical speed-reduction measures, and improving lighting systems. This is the thinking behind the Charleston Capital Connector project: transforming a 3.5-mile riverfront corridor into a multi-modal street with protected bike lanes, safer crosswalks, and improved lighting, while reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes. The $27 million project aims to reduce the probability of vehicle-pedestrian conflicts through physical space restructuring.

The Trade-Off Between Vehicle Size and Urban Safety Design

The data reveals an unsettling structural trend: SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans now account for more than half (50.4%) of vehicles involved in pedestrian fatalities, and this share is still rising. A New York Times investigation found that as personal vehicles become larger and heavier, their lethality to pedestrians increases significantly. Meanwhile, 62.2% of pedestrian deaths occur at locations without roadside sidewalks, and 75% of crashes happen at night. These numbers point to a clear direction for intervention: separating pedestrians from vehicles, reducing speeds, and improving pedestrian infrastructure.However, urban transformation is not a panacea. GHSA data also shows that 21.7% of pedestrian fatalities involve distracted driving, while pedestrian distraction (such as using phones) is also on the rise, and not limited to young people. "Distraction rates are high across all age groups," says Raymond. This suggests that city safety systems need to combine behavioral intervention with technological compensation—such as vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) communication, automatic emergency braking, and pedestrian detection systems.

Infrastructure as a Data-Driven Safety Catalyst

The case of West Virginia is highly representative. From 2015 to 2024, pedestrian deaths in the state accounted for 8.7% of all traffic fatalities, slightly above the national average. The Capital Connector project in Charleston and the Hal Greer Boulevard reconstruction project in Huntington were advanced simultaneously. The latter saw 600 crashes over the past four years, resulting in 233 injuries and one pedestrian death. The reconstruction plan includes dedicated protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, safe intersections, and traffic calming measures. These projects were not designed by intuition alone but were prioritized based on crash heat maps and traffic flow data.

Abernathy emphasizes that data-driven insights not only "understand yesterday's risks" but also "prevent tomorrow's risks." This is precisely the role digital twins and traffic simulation tools play in urban planning—simulating the impact of different design schemes on pedestrian safety before construction begins.

Three Pathways for Future Urban Safety Governance

From the GHSA report and related discussions, three directions for the evolution of urban traffic safety systems can be distilled:

1. Real-time Data Fusion: Integrate vehicle telemetry, infrastructure sensors, and traffic management center data to establish a city-level pedestrian safety dashboard, shifting from passive statistics to active early warning.
2. Vehicle Type Regulation: Implement stricter safety standards for the design of large SUVs and pickup trucks, while promoting automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection systems as standard features.
3. Street Design Restructuring: Take "separation of people and vehicles" as a core principle, reducing accident risk through low-tech, high-impact measures such as narrowing lanes, adding physical barriers, and optimizing nighttime lighting.

A 7% annual decline is a signal for cautious optimism, but it also reminds us that before the era of autonomous driving fully arrives, there is still much room for optimization in traditional traffic systems. And the key to that optimization lies in the continuously generated and flowing data.

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This article is based on the GHSA report "Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State 2025 Preliminary Data" and related expert panel discussions.