Pedestrian Fatality Rates have New Jersey Personal Injury Lawyers Concerned
It has been a bad couple of years for New Jersey’s pedestrians with 135 people killed in 2008 alone. 2009 has not been better. In fact, pedestrian death rates have actually been higher this year with 121 pedestrians killed in accidents so far this year. That’s a staggering increase of 33 percent over the same period of time in 2008.
New Jersey authorities seem to be picking up on the urgency of the situation. New Brunswick last year received $476, 000 in funding from the Department of Transportation, to make pedestrian safety enhancements. The city has already installed radar-activated speed limit signs, and more numbers of traffic safety signs. Crosswalks and curb enhancement projects are also on the anvil. Older slate curbing is being replaced, and repainted to prevent drivers from parking too close to the intersection.
Pedestrian safety was the focus of a recent report released by Transportation for America, which pointed to the large numbers of pedestrian deaths across the country. The report titled Dangerous by Design, says that every year, 5000 people die while performing what should be the mundane acts of walking on a sidewalk or crossing a street. The researchers developed a Pedestrian Danger Index to denote the dangers for pedestrians. While the overall PDI across the country was 52.1, New Jersey’s PDI was slightly higher at 53.5. Atlantic city-Hammonton had a PDI of 75.5, while Trenton-Ewing had one of the lowest PDIs of 24.3.
In New Jersey, 22.1 percent of all traffic deaths were pedestrians. That is much higher than the nationwide average of 11.8 percent. For every 100,000 people here, there were 1.67 pedestrian deaths, higher than the nationwide average of 1.53.
Between 2005 and 2008, New Jersey had access to federal transportation funds of $3 billion, of which just 0.5 percent has been spent on making pedestrian safety enhancements. That translates into a royal sum of 47 cents for every person in New Jersey. No wonder New Jersey personal injury lawyers are seeing such a spike in pedestrian deaths in the state.
