Urban Design and Planning Professor Emeritus Anne Vernez Moudon was recently featured in an article–initially published on crosscut.com and highlighted in UW Today–examining the current state of pedestrian safety in Seattle.
Contrary to Washington’s stated goal of reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero, deaths have in fact been rising. In the article Moudon notes that high-speed arterials like Aurora Avenue North have an outsized contribut
ion to these numbers, given their higher traffic speeds and limited safe crossing sites. To back this up, she provides sobering statistics showing that when a pedestrian is hit by a car, the risk of death increases from just 5% at 25 mph to 100% at 50 mph.
The complete article can be read here.