THE PEDESTRIAN LIFE

As our WSU ALIVE! Summer Resource Fair driver safety awareness booth comes to a successful end--thanks to committed drivers who pledged to drive safely--we also received much valid feedback on what they felt was necessary to improve driver safety in our region, questions including insurance requirements, the Distracted Driving Law passed in July 2017, to, "Where is the DMV?" We met drivers of all ages and sized from Washington state to international countries. Although we talked with quite a few students who would be driving their first year, we also met a more than equal, opposite number who chose not to drive their first year (or whose parents didn't want them to!) and opted for public transportation or to walk.



Interestingly, most individuals were confident that because they would be walking to most of their destinations, that driver safety awareness didn't apply to them. When we pointed out that it actually impacts everyone using streets, highways, roads, paths, and sidewalks! Yes, that would be pedestrians. Why pedestrians?? With the rampant numbers of distracted drivers driving behind the wheel due to cell phone texting, the numbers of youthful drivers, in fatal car crashes alone, reached 31% by 2016 in southeastern Washington state. So, walkers, runners, cyclist, mothers with strollers, pedestrians walking their dogs, anyone really, have become moving targets! We feel pedestrian safety awareness is as crucial as distracted driving awareness, the two go hand-in-hand. Albeit, for whatever reasons, we applauded those drivers who made the choice to utilize alternative transportation or just by walking, an official mode of transportation.

Through our campaign, since 2016, we've been able to slowly lower the number of fatal car crashes, but, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the number of cyclist and pedestrian deaths have steadily increased since 2009:

PEDESTRIANS                                                 CYCLISTS

2009                          4,109                                                                                   628

2018                          6,216                                                                                   861

Regulators also estimated that while overall traffic deaths had decreased in 2018 (1%) compared to 2017, that pedestrian (4%) and cyclist (10%) deaths had increased.

(Citation: USA Today, NHTSA percentage estimates for 2018)

It has become an alarming trend! While driving inside a vehicle with all the new high-tech safety measures installed has become safer, the people outside of the car are now in danger. It has also caught the attention of a handful--20--auto makers who, in the last 3 years, are arduously attempting to make transportation safer for pedestrians which has not always been at the top of their list, by installing automatic emergency braking systems for pedestrians, bicycle safety detection systems, engineering hoods and fenders to become more pliable in the event of an accident. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) will require automakers to install high functioning pedestrian detection systems making them standard equipment on vehicles starting in 2020 as an incentive for top safety ratings. High technology would ultimately allow vehicles to interact with each other to avoid road hazard, accidents and pedestrians!

Until we have developed and perfected such preventative, pedestrian safe advanced technology, and in order to keep the general public safe out on the road, we'll have to continue with campaigns such as ours, that informs and keeps everyone aware, one driver, one pedestrian, one person at a time. So we all arrive home safely.

For more information on safe driving, walking, tips, goto: www.safepalousedrivers.com

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