- [Announcer] It's becoming much more dangerous
to walk on our nation's streets.
In Texas, today's pedestrian deaths
account for an estimated 20% of all traffic fatalities.
That's almost double from the 12% of all deaths
just 10 years ago.
- Being a pedestrian is like 50 times as dangerous
as being inside a vehicle
because you don't have that huge motorized shell
to protect you.
You're a very vulnerable user
and yet it's a really healthy mode of transportation
and we absolutely want to see a lot more of it.
- They looked at 10 years worth of pedestrian crash data
throughout the entire state
and so I think in that the scale of that is different
than other research projects that have
focused on pedestrian and bicycle crashes.
- [Announcer] From the analysis, researchers were able
to identify the most dangerous
pedestrian corridors in the state
based on the crashes over a 10 year period.
Five corridors in Austin were deemed the most dangerous
and four Houston corridors were also in the top 10.
San Antonio was the other metropolitan area,
with the top ranked dangerous corridor.
The researchers also revealed the most dangerous areas
in each of the five biggest regions of the state.
Houston, Dallas Fort Worth, San Antonio,
Austin and El Paso.
- These crashes occur all over the place.
They often occur late at night
and so they can be in various positions
on this extensive network that we have here.
And so we're layering all that information together
for hundreds of thousands of crashes
and then we're going in deep on the pedestrian crashes
and looking for those really dangerous corridors
and intersections to see if we can suggest
really cost effective treatments
to bring those numbers down.
- [Announcer] The research revealed vital information,
including that 50% of the pedestrian deaths in Austin
were of people who were homeless.
Weekend nights, early mornings were especially deadly
and alcohol was a major contributor.
Also, elderly pedestrians were much more likely to die
from a vehicle strike than were young pedestrians.
- That's part of the product that we've provided
at TxDOT is a whole list of treatments
and some are very easy to imagine
and others you have to be much more specific
and everything is site specific.
So there's some places where pedestrians
heavily use the northbound crosswalk
or the east side crosswalk and so you really have to zoom in
on each site specifically and we took the time to do that
for 10 or more of the most dangerous sites
and we hope through an implementation project
to be doing another a hundred or so sites
and that will be a nice list of places
just to go either as a DOT or a city
or a county transportation official
and help make those improvements.
- I think in general, there's been more of a focus
on pedestrian crashes and specifically
because they make up such a outsize portion
of overall roadway crashes.
And so I think with that additional focus
on reducing these type of crashes
and designing better pedestrian facilities
so that these crashes happen less often,
I'm optimistic that the timing of this research
will really assist with some of the initiatives
that are going on throughout TxDOT.
- [Announcer] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.