When we talk about traffic violence

New York City has the lowest car ownership of any large US city, and still 70% of its voters know someone who’s been injured or killed in a traffic crash. On Staten Island, the borough that drives the most, it’s 88%.

Safe streets advocates, me included, often write off the neighbors who drive everywhere, though they’re the ones most likely to know someone killed or injured by driving.

No national poll asks the question. The lifetime odds of dying in a crash are 1 in 101, and the average American knows ~611 people, so ~6 people they know will die in one. ~28 more will be seriously injured.

By 40, ~79% of Americans have lost someone they know to a crash.

Most people never connect those deaths to anything larger, partly because local news reports every crash as a one-off. Readers who see the same story alongside a count of other pedestrians killed nearby blame the road more and the people involved less.

Asked directly, 82% of Americans favor safer street design even if it makes driving slower. Support drops when the question names a specific tool. Only 47% of drivers back speed cameras on residential streets.

When San Mateo put an all-way stop at a crash-prone corner near my home this month, 15 people came out to celebrate it, and nobody I know of complained. The man who runs the preschool on that corner once gave first aid to someone hurt in a crash there while they waited for an ambulance. I knocked on their door, and he emailed the city about the crashes his students hear from the playground. He’s one of the people those polls count, and he acted the first time someone asked.