Posts Tagged "walking"
U.S. Surgeon General issuing a rare call-to-action to make walking safer & more convenient
The Surgeon General will issue a new call-to-action next Wednesday that focuses on encouraging cities and towns to design and build their roads and public places to make walking easier, safer and more pleasant.
Urban bike trails in cities like Indianapolis, Dallas and Atlanta are proving to have rich economic benefits to city neighborhoods
Affirming a trend seen in other cities, Indianapolis’s eight-mile Cultural Trail has been a boon to the neighborhoods adjacent to it — as well as the city as a whole — increasing property values of homes and businesses and giving residents and tourists an efficient, unbroken path to walk, bike and move around the city.
Healthy economies need healthy people — Nashville leads the way for other regions
What’s the connection between healthy residents and a healthy bottom line? Why should a local business community care about improving the health of the residents that live there? Representatives from five regions gathered last week in Nashville to learn how providing better transportation infrastructure and building more walkable communities can help improve residents’ health — and boost local economic prosperity and competitiveness.
Its National Walking Day, but too many people will have to walk unsafe streets
You may not have known it — its not the most publicized special day on the books — but today is National Walking Day. Some of you may have traded part or all of your drive or transit trip today for a walk to work. But for many, every day is walking day, and it happens on streets with dangerous or inconvenient conditions that no one should have to endure just to walk to school, their job, or the grocery store.
Photos of dangerous streets have been streaming in
After putting out the call far and wide for pictures of streets designed for speeding traffic at the expense of safe travel by people on foot or bike, we’ve been getting some great — and by great, we mean frightening and terrible — photos of inconvenient, poorly-planned, dangerous and downright hostile conditions for pedestrians. Here […]
Raquel Nelson’s story may be rare, but the dangerous conditions are not — show us
Many of you were shocked by the story of Raquel Nelson, the single mom in Atlanta charged with vehicular homicide when her son was killed while crossing an unsafe street with her. While shocking, head-scratching stories like hers are thankfully rare, it’s emblematic of the road design in many places that we live, and we want to make sure that Congress gets that picture loud and clear. We want to show them that roads like Austell Road by Raquel Nelson’s apartment — 4 lane speedways with few considerations for pedestrians — are far too common. So send us your photos of dangerous, unsafe and poorly planned streets out there across America.
Protect, don’t prosecute, pedestrians — Raquel Nelson seeking a new trial
The story of Raquel Nelson, the Atlanta mother charged with vehicular homicide when her son was killed while crossing a street with her, continues to make waves in the local and national media. It’s been a galvanizing story, as people across the country were shocked to see a grieving mother convicted and facing jail time […]
Lawmakers move to address pedestrian safety in the wake of Dangerous by Design
Tuesday’s release of Dangerous by Design outlining the 47,700 deaths and 688,000 injuries to people while walking on unsafe streets has renewed Congress’ focus on pedestrian safety in the next transportation bill. But what substantial steps the House and Senate will take to promote safer streets and improve conditions for walking remains very much in […]
New report and map chronicles the visceral reality of 47,000 preventable pedestrian deaths
From 2000-2009, 47,000 people were killed while walking our nation’s streets, according to the 2011 edition of our pedestrian safety report. These fatalities occurred largely on streets designed for speeding traffic at the expense of people on foot. Dangerous by Design 2011 adds a visual element: Data from 2001-2009 can be viewed on an interactive map, showing details about the victim, the street type and even what the street looks like via Google Street View.
National Geographic on Dangerous by Design
We mentioned this on Twitter when the issue came out back in July, but National Geographic had a nice one-page feature on Dangerous by Design, our study from 2009 ranking metro areas on their relative danger to those on foot and bike, focusing on Florida’s overall risk based on having 4 of the top 10 most dangerous metros. In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community, and it’s high time that more attention was paid to this preventable loss of life that we far too often ignore or simple believe to be inevitable.
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