National author highlights pedestrian safety and solutions for Hawai‘i
Oct 28, 2024
Last year in Hawai‘i, 93 people died in traffic crashes with about 40% percent of those people were walking or biking, according to the state Department of Transportation. While the causes of each of these deaths vary, these senseless deaths are avoidable. We can prevent them through changing how we think about our roads — from planning to design and how we ensure safe travel for all – from keiki to kupuna.
That was one of several key messages shared by national speaker and author Angie Schmitt, who visited O‘ahu in September to talk about the overall rise in pedestrian deaths and possible solutions. On Sept. 25, Schmitt spoke to approximately 100 guests, including Honolulu Councilmember Radiant Cordeiro and the City and County of Honolulu’s Director of Transportation Services Roger Morton, at the Blaisdell Center.
Schmitt pointed out that in the last ten years, pedestrian deaths have increased 31%. She equated part of it to significant and unnecessary changes in vehicles size and power. Another contributing factor is road design that doesn’t take into account that marginalized or more vulnerable people — those who are older in age, lower income, or an ethnic minority — are more likely to be killed through car-centric designs.
She highlighted proven solutions that support better pedestrian experience are refuge islands, bump outs, quick builds, retimed traffic signals, and improved lighting. Ulupono Initiative has supported quick builds all across Hawai‘i. Although many of these solutions are happening in Hawai‘i, they are not happening at the pace needed to address these life-changing events — or sometimes traffic flow is chosen over safety.
“From Ulupono’s perspective, we’re interested in making Hawai‘i more sustainable and resilient through clean transportation choices. Getting more folks to walk, bike, and roll is more challenging when people feel unsafe,” said Kathleen Rooney, Ulupono’s director of transportation programs and policy. “We brought Angie to Hawai‘i to elevate the issue of the rising number of pedestrian deaths and to get people talking about the just and necessary policy and infrastructure changes.”
She also visited with journalism students at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and working journalists and communications experts. Schmitt discussed how their industry can help address these issues. In many cases, traffic fatality reporting can be perfunctory and contribute to the feeling that traffic fatalities are just something to be accepted, despite wildly different fatality rates across communities, states, and countries. For example, Hawai‘i is ranked as the 13th least safe state for pedestrians, more than three times as the most safe state.[1] Helping to expand the conversations in our communities is imperative to addressing this public health crisis. Over the next decade, we will lose 100,000 people in the United States for problems in road design that we can address now.
Schmitt’s book is “Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America.” She was the longtime national editor of Streetsblog and has a background in planning and newspaper reporting.
[1] https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Dangerous-By-Design-2024-States_Final.pdf