Do we spend too little on preventing pedestrian deaths?
A national transportation coalition, Transportation for America, thinks so. According to the coalition's Web site, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community in the past 15 years. More than 43,000 Americans - including 3,906 children under 16 - have been killed this decade alone, the Web site states.
"This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like the kind of attention that would surely follow such a disaster," it says.
The coalition is urging to make streets safer, such as designing roads with pedestrians and bicyclists in mind, retrofitting the most dangerous roads and making neighborhoods walkable.
The coalition's study released rankings, and in Pennsylvania, the York-Hanover area ranked 8th for being dangerous for pedestrians. The area reported six pedestrian fatalities in 2007/2008, and it represented 5.6 percent of the traffic deaths. The average federal dollars spent per person on walking and biking in the York-Hanover area is $1.68.
Click here to go to the coalition's Web site.
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