About every 12 minutes, someone is killed on America’s roads and countless others are injured. Health Brief is a coproduction of The Washington Post and KFF Health News. More than died in car crashes in 2022, a death toll that rivals or surpasses those of other major public health threats, such as and .
“We have not recognized that traffic violence is a preventable public health crisis,” said , a co-founder of . Traffic-related injuries and deaths cost the health-care system more than in 2022, according to the . And pedestrian deaths have spiked, reaching in 2022, the highest level in more than four decades, according to the federal government.
“The transportation system shouldn’t hurt us, and it shouldn’t harm the environment,” said , an associate professor at the who uses policy and behavioral research to try to prevent car crashes. Transportation experts blame traffic deaths on more reckless driving and less traffic enforcement than before the coronavirus pandemic, combined with larger and deadlier SUVs and trucks. But they primarily fault a transportation system that was designed for efficient movement and economic development — not safety.
To reverse that, the Biden administration is looking to the ,” a transportation strategy that has achieved piecemeal adoption across the country. The approach puts safety at the core of road and vehicle design and transportation policies, forcing traffic to move more slowly through communities, Ehsani said. This trans.