Accidents By Design

Trey Smith

Approximately 40,000 people will die on U.S. roads this year, and thousands more will be injured. A disproportionate number of those traffic injuries will befall people from lower-income communities. According to new research, pedestrians in the poorest neighborhoods of Montreal were six times more likely to suffer traffic injuries than pedestrians in the wealthiest neighborhoods. Bicyclists and motorists in poorer neighborhoods were also at greater risk; they were four times more likely to be injured on the road.
~ from Accident-Zone: Poorer Neighborhoods Have Less-Safe Road Designs by Sarah Fecht ~

While this study reported in Scientific American might surprise you, it shouldn't. We've known for a long time that environmental factors in poor communities are more than a little unjust.

For example, landfills are never located near well-to-do neighborhoods. The rich simply will not put up with the associated smells and varmints that are attracted to garbage. Chemical plants and oil refineries are located nowhere near posh communities. No, they are far more likely to be located in depressed areas -- places where folks are less likely to put up a fight.

Because the rich often are ensconced in their gated communities on the other side of the tracks, they tend not to bear the brunt of the environmental and economic fallout that their enterprises and policies create. This is one of the chief reasons they appear so out-of-touch; they physically have removed themselves from bearing almost all of the dire consequences.

And let's face it. If there are negative impacts from our decisions and yet those impacts are felt predominantly by others, most people are less likely to factor those impacts into their decision-making process. It's the old out of sight/out of mind mentality.

Returning to the research cited above,

Morency's team found that lower-income neighborhoods had twice as many intersections of major thoroughfares, which tend to carry high volumes of traffic at high speeds. Even after controlling for traffic volumes these intersections had, on average, 2.4 times more pedestrian injuries than did intersections of minor roads. Using a multivariate analysis, Morency's team calculated that if the intersections of major roads were replaced with those of minor streets, pedestrian injuries would decrease by 58 percent; harm to cyclists and motorists would decline by 24 and 72 percent, respectively.

Similarly, poor communities contained a higher proportion of four-way intersections than did wealthier neighborhoods. Four-way intersections were responsible for 3.5 times more pedestrian injuries and 4.7 more motorist trauma than were three-way intersections. If poor communities contained the same number of four-way intersections as wealthier communities, pedestrian injuries would decline by 71 percent for pedestrians, 58 percent for cyclists and 79 percent for motorists.

If nothing else, this study provides much food for thought!