And walking is far more dangerous than driving or flying, per mile traveled. The fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled was 1.4 deaths among automobile users, and 0.16 deaths among people aboard airplanes. This means that for each mile traveled, walking is 36 times more dangerous than driving, and over 300 times more dangerous than flying. About thirteen percent of all the people who died in traffic accidents during 1997-1998 were pedestrians. But this only begins to describe the scope of the problem.
Pedestrians also pay a heavy toll in injuries.
However, this number may be low because of under-reporting. Some places in the United States are more deadly for pedestrians than others. To measure that danger, we ranked the country s largest metro areas, taking into account both the rate of pedestrian deaths as measured by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the amount of pedestrian activity in the community as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. These results show that walking tends to be most dangerous in newer Southern and Western metro areas. Intersections are often designed with wide, sweeping curves that allow cars to keep moving at high speed, but increase the crossing distance and danger for pedestrians.