Walking the mean streets of Florida

A leisurely stroll down the streets of Florida mean taking your life in your own hands. That’s right pedestrians: the streets in major cities all over Florida are some of the most dangerous in the country for bipeds.

Orlando-Kissimmee, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami-Fort Lauderdale top the list for the most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians. These are followed by Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, Las Vegas, NV, Memphis, TN, and Phoenix, AZ. The list ends with two cities in Texas: Houston and Dallas.

The list was published by a US transportation reform group called Transportation for America in their annual Dangerous by Design report. They focus their attention on the epidemic of preventable pedestrian deaths which result from bad road design. For the ranking they look at cities with over one million people and measure danger encountered to average amount walked.

From 200 to 2009 more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the US. They point out that equals a jumbo jet crashing every month for a year. Add to that more than 688,000 people injured and you get a pedestrian catastrophe every seven minutes in this country. Children, older adults and minorities are disproportionately represented in those numbers, but in fact, streets just aren’t as safe as you might think while you’re casually walking along. 12% of road fatalities are people on foot.

Transportation for America advocates for federal transpiration reform that mandates the complete use of streets, meaning a transportation system than not only takes into account travel by car, trucks and buses, but also pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists.

Source: Transportation for America, Reuters