You are crossing the street when all of the sudden you are hit by two tons of steel going 50 miles per hour. This is the problem that car-centered America faces. Cities are not planned for pedestrians or for people walking or biking, but rather for cars.
Each year over 7,000 pedestrians lose their lives to motor vehicles and each year 140,000 pedestrians are treated in emergency rooms due to accidents with motor vehicles.
In total each year, 37,461 people lose their lives in car crashes.
There certainly has to be a way to reduce the amount of people who are injured or killed in motor vehicle accidents each year. We can look to other places worldwide to see what they’ve done.
In Norway in 2025, there were 111 deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, and in 2024 they had less than 100 deaths. In the US, 1 out of every 100 people die in motor vehicle accidents while in Norway 1 out of every 55,000 people die in motor vehicle accidents.
What differences can we notice about these two places? Norwegian cities are built with more walkable infrastructure and more public transportation, and not built around cars.
Another country with amazing examples of good urban planning is the Netherlands. The Netherlands are known for having walkable and bikeable cities as well as amazing public transport. They were not always this way, as in the 1960s they started prioritizing motor vehicles, but just 10 years later, they started undoing what they had done due to concerns over rising pedestrian and traffic deaths as well as an oil embargo.
The Netherlands started – and is still working on – taking car centric roads and turning them into walkable and people centric designs.
Is it too late for the U.S.? No! In Salt Lake City for example, right now they are building a “5-mile-plus” urban trail, and in 2025 they renovated streets to include bike lanes, and increased pedestrian access. And Salt Lake City’s wide roads allow for easy reconstruction of the roads to be safer for pedestrians.
Non-walkable cities are also the cause of America’s obesity problem. If we offer more walkable solutions, then it will encourage more people to walk and allow people to include exercise into their everyday lives.
It is important that we push for more walkable infrastructure and make our cities more walkable and people friendly. Look for what your local city can do, and reach out to your city and get involved and make your voice heard.
