Its sometimes said that America is a country you drive across, rather than walk. While that may be true of the nation as a whole, let’s look a bit narrower and analyze how safe it is for people to walk about the city of Fremont, California. In a recent yearly survey of Fremont’s crash data, it seems that the biggest cause of problems is drivers who feel they are above pedestrians in spite of state traffic laws demanding drivers watch for pedestrians even if they are nowhere near an intersection. Further, those laws require drivers to decelerate the moment they spot a pedestrian on the road so they can easily stop before colliding into a victim.
Based on the data of this survey, intersections like Washington-Osgood and Walnut-Godfrey are among the crossroads where the people of Fremont are most likely to run into an accident. While pedestrian accidents experienced a dip in 2020, the numbers are slowly climbing up. Between the years of 2018 and 2022, Fremont had around 43 serious pedestrian accidents that led to a serious injury or were fatal. In 2022, California’s Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) reported that at least 39 pedestrian serious accidents that year; “serious” in these contexts means that there was a crash that involved a serious injury and/or fatality. Sadly, this loss of life has not been blunted. 2022 had five pedestrian deaths and TIMS noted that 35 people were afflicted with serious injuries in collisions with Fremont pedestrians.
Hit-And-Run in Fremont
If the issue of drivers colliding into pedestrians were not already concerning, the problems are amplified when motorists try to evade responsibility. Any driver who continues moving after impacting with a human body only worsens the risk of injury and financial hardships. Evasive drivers who fail to report their actions leave their victims vulnerable to additional impacts from oncoming drivers who may be unaware of an injured person knocked prone on the road.
This frequency makes it plausible for a scenario where the victim of a hit-and-run is left struggling to wait for an ambulance. If the driver is never caught, their victims and the families of those victims will be left holding the bag on paying for a costly ambulance ride and weeks of hospitalization. TIMS reports that while 2020 had a drop in hit-and-runs with pedestrians, to just four incidents, those numbers rose to eight in 2021 and furthermore to 9 in 2020.
Pedestrian Accident Numbers Within California and the United States
Whether you are looking at just the state of California or the nation, pedestrian accident rates continue to rise. The Governor’s Highway Safety Administration (GHSA) estimates that just over 7,500 pedestrians were killed across the country in 2022, marking a 1% increase from 2021’s 7,443 fatalities. Indeed, 2022’s statistics indicate the highest pedestrian death toll since 1981. This continues a rising trend that the United States of American is a dangerous place for pedestrians.
Among pedestrian fatalities in 2022, roughly 1,100 occurred in California, placing it above Texas (834) and Florida (824) on the list of state pedestrian fatalities for that year. When looking at records from California’s own Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), over 1,200 pedestrian fatalities occurred on the roads of California.
Conclusion
While 2023’s statistics are still being compiled, in 2024 and beyond there is a chance to improve things. Simply put, Fremont drivers need to slow down and be aware of their surroundings when they come up to an intersection, especially if its Washington-Osgood or Walnut-Godfrey. Being just a bit more cautious makes the difference between life and death.
