Sprawl Kills

Wired:

Pedestrian deaths in the United States are at a five-year high, and if you’re among the few people who walks around Orlando, you’re more likely to be killed by a car than anyone else in the nation. You can thank 60 years of auto-centric planning and transportation policies for that.
Things aren’t much better elsewhere in the southeast or southwest, two regions that account for the majority of the 20 most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians. All of them boomed after World War II, an era when urban design and transit planning favored the almighty automobile above walking, cycling and mass transit.
That’s the key takeaway from “Dangerous By Design,” a sobering report by the National Complete Streets Coalition, an arm of Smart Growth America. The report outlines the riskiest cities for pedestrians and argues–at a time when Congress is debating a transportation funding bill–that state and federal legislators and regulators must do more to make our streets safer for all who use them.
The report notes that 45,284 pedestrians were killed between 2003 and 2012 (the latest year for which data were available). The numbers have spiked in the past few years, from just over 4,200 deaths in 2007 to nearly 5,000 in 2012, and the researchers behind it are at a loss to explain why. But they make no bones about arguing pedestrians and cyclists would be safer on “complete streets”—those that include crosswalks and dedicated bike and bus lanes to slow traffic and increase safety.
The common link is among cities in the Sunbelt, which grew rapidly after World War II, when transit design abetted suburban sprawl and focused primarily on drivers.
There, low-density neighborhoods “rely on wider streets with higher speeds to connect homes, shops, and schools—roads that tend to be more dangerous for people walking,” the report says. More than half of all pedestrian deaths recorded from 2003-2012 occurred on wide arterial roads designed to move cars quickly.
The safest cities, according to the study, tend to be older ones, particularly in the northeast, that developed long before the car became the dominant form of transport.

Sprawl makes pedestrians more rare, which leads folks to forget they might be present.  God forbid you try to cross a multi-lane arterial street without a light.  One other thing to note is that Florida has the four cities with the highest danger index.  I think more older drivers may contribute to a higher fatality rate for pedestrians.  I am surprised Cincinnati or Dayton don't appear, as they are largely sprawling metro areas.  However, winter may limit the amount of pedestrian activity here when compared to the Sunbelt.