“US pedestrian deaths were 10.9 percent lower in the first half of 2025 than in the same period a year earlier, though they remained slightly above the 2019 level,” reports The Doomslayer.
The Governors Highway Association explains:
Drivers struck and killed 3,024 people walking in the United States in first six months of 2025, down 10.9% from the year before – the largest annual decline since GHSA began tracking pedestrain deaths 15 years ago.
While the 10.9% decrease is encouraging, pedestrian deaths remain 2.5% above the 2019 level, the last year before a steep rise in dangerous driving behaviors and traffic deaths caused by the pandemic….
In addition to the lasting emotional trauma caused by a pedestrian being killed, there is a significant financial cost of each death. The total financial cost of all 3,024 fatalities from January through June 2025 combines to exceed $40 billion.
Pedestrian fatality rates vary widely from state to state. Idaho has only 0.25 deaths per 100,000 people. But there are 1.71 deaths per 100,000 people in Hawaii and Louisiana. By contrast, there are only 0.31 deaths per 100,000 people in Minnesota and 0.33 deaths per 100,000 people in South Dakota and Wisconsin. South Carolina has 1.59 deaths per 100,000 people.
The pandemic itself may not have caused an increase in traffic deaths.
Road deaths spiked in the U.S. after the death of George Floyd, as police pulled back from police stops of motorists (especially black motorists), leading to big increases in reckless driving and crashes, especially among black motorists.
But in the rest of the world, it was a different story, with a steady fall in road deaths in every year since 2010.
Pedestrian deaths rose 3% to 274,000 between 2010 and 2021, accounting for 23% of global fatalities.
In the U.S., in contrast, the motor vehicle fatality rate went up 7.1% in 2020, and 10.5% in 2021, before falling 0.3% in 2022, according to Wikipedia. There were 3,230 fatalities in 2021, compared to only 2,967 fatalities in 2010. Road deaths increased both as an absolute number and as a fraction of America’s population from 2019 to 2021.
The rise in motor vehicle fatalities was especially sharp for black people, with “motor vehicle fatalities among blacks” soaring “36 percent in June–December 2020 versus the same period in 2019, compared with a 9 percent increase among the rest of the population.” “In the tumultuous first month of the racial reckoning,” that followed George Floyd’s death, “743 black people were killed in traffic fatalities, up from 478 in June 2019, a 55 percent increase.”
As the progressive website Vox noted about the recent increase in U.S. traffic deaths:
According to a 2021 survey of over 1,000 police officers, nearly 60 percent said they were less likely to stop a vehicle for violating traffic laws than they were prior to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired nationwide protests……traffic stops are decreasing while deaths are rising….Some experts…think there’s an obvious link. Enforcement efforts that are high-visibility and focused on safety are shown to reduce risky driving.
