Fact Sheet

In 2016, there were 34,439 fatal crashes and countless more injury crashes in the United States. Increased coordination between first responders, hospitals, and other traffic safety stakeholders, along with better-quality Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data collection, would enhance planning efforts to improve first responder time to collisions. In emergency medicine, practitioners have a “golden hour,” sometimes less, following traumatic injury wherein prompt medical attention offers the highest chance to prevent death. Thus, improved timeliness and technologies, proximity to care, and...

Everyone is a pedestrian, whether or not walking is one’s primary mode of travel, and as a commute mode, walking is gaining in numbers. Nearly 16 pedestrians died every day, averaging a pedestrian every 1.5 hours, in traffic collisions in 2016. Pedestrian fatalities increased 27.4 percent from 2007 to 2016 while other traffic deaths decreased 13.9 percent. In 2016, the number of pedestrian fatalities was at its highest one-year level since 1990. California was one of five states (along with Florida, Texas, New York, and Arizona) which reported more than 100 pedestrian deaths and...

Bicycling is becoming more popular across the country, for commuting, exercise, and leisure. However, in the event of a traffic collision between a motor vehicle and a bicyclist, the bicyclist is the more vulnerable party and is more likely to be injured or killed than motor vehicle passengers. Bicycling fatalities increased 14.4 percent from 734 in 2012 to 840 in 2016 nationwide. Bicyclist fatalities represented 2.2 percent of the total number of traffic fatalities in 2016. Bicycle collisions are defined as crashes where one or more victims is a bicyclist, other cyclist, or bicycling...