This graph shows the upward tred of predestrian deaths at night. The numbers from 2022 to 2023 are preliminary and subject to change. Date provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute. Herald-Bulletin graphic
Fredy Ramos Escobar was walking along I-70 in Terre Haute on Christmas Day when a driver struck and killed the 33-year-old Kansas man.
Two weeks earlier, Walter Powell, 57, Brookville, was attempting to cross Indiana 1 in southern Indiana when he was hit by a truck. He later died at a Cincinnati hospital.
A 27-year-old man was declared dead in May in Anderson after a driver struck him at the intersection of Indiana 9 and Rainbow Boulevard, a small road through a residential area.
The three fatalities all share a common theme. Each accident happened at night.
Those deaths are just the tip of the iceberg.
Since the 1980s, the number of pedestrian deaths has substantially decreased across Indiana and the U.S. Around 2010, that trend inexplicably reversed.
Since then, the number of pedestrian fatalities has steadily climbed. The increase has come almost exclusively from pedestrian deaths at night.
Indiana hit a near historic peak in 2018, when more than 125 Hoosiers pedestrians were killed. Nearly 100 of those deaths happened in the dark, according to federal crash data.
It’s a startling trend, said Andrea Miller, a senior planner at the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization who helped create the city’s safe-street action plan.
She surmised the pandemic would explain the rising number of fatalities and expected to see a decrease as drivers’ routines began to return to normal. What Miller saw instead was distressing.
“I was thinking maybe it would just kind of reverse itself,” she said. “But we’re not seeing that, and that really does alarm me.”
A BEWILDERING TREND
Data indicates the pandemic had seriously negative impacts on drivers’ behavior.
In 2021, the total number of fatal crashes in Indiana hit 863. Preliminary data shows that jumped to around 950 in 2022, marking a nearly 10% increase in just one year and the highest number of fatal crashes in decades.
Still, the pandemic doesn’t explain why the number of pedestrian deaths at night has trended dramatically higher than the number of fatal vehicle crashes.
Comparing 2011 to 2021, the number of those fatal accidents in Indiana increased by around 27%. Meanwhile, pedestrians hit and killed at night skyrocketed by 116% comparing the same years.
What’s even more surprising is the fact the amount of people actually walking dropped a staggering 36% from 2019 to 2022 across the U.S., according to a new report from StreetLight Data.
Add it all up, and the numbers paint an unexpected and bewildering picture of what’s causing the surge in nighttime pedestrian deaths, according to Mike Goralski, the Boone County highway engineer who served on Indianapolis’ streetsafety planning committee.
Even road safety experts are stumped by the trend, he noted.
“I think it left the whole industry thinking ‘What is happening?’” he said. “It’s shocked a lot of people for sure.”
PINPOINTING THE PROBLEM
The dangers of nighttime driving are an obvious reason more pedestrians are killed in the dark, but those risks haven’t changed and can’t adequately explain the increase.
Two other factors seem to offer the most convincing explanation: more distractions and more speeding.
Cellphones and large dashboard touchscreens with lots of buttons to push are pulling drivers’ eyes away from the road more than ever, argued Devon McDonald, director of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, which compiles and analyzes crash data.
“Distracted driving is always a major issue … and it’s been a serious, rising problem over the last several years,” he said.
At the same time, the number of fatalities stemming from excessive speed has climbed more than 50% from 2018 to 2022, when speed was listed as the main cause of 290 crashes, according to the Indiana Triennial Highway Safety Plan published last year by the criminal justice institute.
The problem is worse in rural areas, where 60% of all fatal crashes occurred and nearly 6,000 crashes listed speed as the primary factor.
However, cities and large metro areas, unsurprisingly, account for the majority of pedestrian deaths at night.
That’s because for more than a century, street systems in both urban and suburban areas have been designed for cars and not people, argued Miller with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization.
Large lanes, ruler-straight roads and limited lighting all signal to drivers they don’t need to pay attention or slow down, she said.
There’s also the basic fact that there are simply more vehicles on the road than ever before. From 1990 to 2021, the number of registered vehicles in the U.S. grew from 193 million to 282 million, marking a nearly 50% increase, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Combine that with the uptick in unsafe driving habits many Hoosiers developed during the pandemic, and the reasons behind the spike in pedestrian deaths at night becomes less hazy.
“For decades, we’ve really prioritized vehicle traffic and only vehicle traffic,” Miller said. “Unfortunately, we’re seeing the consequences of that today as people become more interested in walking and other forms of commuting.”
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