Most Dangerous Cities For Pedestrians

You may categorize this disaster as unnatural, but the truth is that this occurs more often than you realize. One would not suspect that taking a stroll out on the town would end up being your last.

Between 2003 through 2012, 47,025 people died while walking on our streets. That’s sixteen times the number of Americans who died in natural disasters—earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes—over the last 10 years. The number of those who were injured were as astonishing 676,000, to put it into perspective, that means someone one foot is being hit by a car every 8 minutes.

Those figures came from a report by Smart Growth America’s “Dangerous by Design“. The report uses a Pedestrian Danger Index (PDI) to quantify where in the country a person walking on foot would be most likely to be hit by a moving vehicle.

“Metro Orlando tops the list of most dangerous areas to walk this year, followed by the Tampa–St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, Miami and Memphis regions. Across the Orlando region, the calculated PDI for 2003–2012 was 244.28, four times higher than the national PDI. The Birmingham, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix and Charlotte regions round out the list of the ten most dangerous places to walk.” – Smart Growth America