These 20 Cities are the Most Dangerous for Pedestrians in 2022

Published on June 6, 2022
Published on June 6, 2022
Pedestrians should always keep their wits about them when traversing busy streets, but walkers in these 20 cities should especially be on high alert for careless — or reckless — drivers.
For those looking to experience a city to its fullest, walking is often the best way to do so. Finding new restaurants or shops, appreciating urban scenery, and meeting new people are all easiest when traveling by foot. Plus, walking offers exercise and fresh air that most other means of transportation — especially driving — can’t match.
Unfortunately, many Americans cannot enjoy this pleasure as much as they might want. Nationally, less than 3% of Americans walk to work, while more than 80% of commuters drive themselves or carpool.[1] This means that automobile traffic often dominates city travel, even in densely populated areas where pedestrians are common.
Because of this constant vehicle traffic, pedestrians should always be on high alert when crossing streets and intersections, though drivers have recently been making this task more challenging. Rates of dangerous driving behavior, including speeding and reckless driving, are on the rise across America, endangering all who use the roads.[2] Not all cities are the same, however, and some have drivers who make walking the streets an especially hazardous activity.
Curious to see where drivers most often jeopardize walkers’ safety, data scientists at Insurify turned to their database of over 4.6 million car insurance applications to identify the 20 cities that are most dangerous for pedestrians in 2022.
Other studies take only pedestrian motor vehicle fatalities into account when determining the most dangerous cities for pedestrians, but this data alone may not paint the whole picture. Citations for failing to yield the right of way to a pedestrian occur nearly 20 times more frequently than pedestrian deaths and thus may represent a more widespread pattern of behavior toward pedestrians.
The data science team at Insurify, a platform to compare auto insurance quotes, referred to its database of over 4.6 million insurance applications to determine the most dangerous metro areas for pedestrians.
When applying for car insurance, drivers disclose information such as where they live and their driving history, in addition to any moving violations on their record within the past seven years. For each U.S. city with over 50,000 residents — the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of an urban area — Insurify’s data scientists calculated the proportion of drivers reporting one or more citations for failing to yield the right of way to a pedestrian. The top 20 cities with the highest share of these drivers were ranked as the most dangerous cities for pedestrians in 2022.
The findings in this article represent statistical trends found in Insurify’s analysis of over 4.6 million car insurance applications. The findings of this study are not meant to imply the direction nor necessarily the existence of a causal relationship. Rather, this is a presentation of statistical correlations of public interest.
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