What should Congress do to stop the scourge of pedestrian death?

The newest addendum to Dangerous by Design shows which Congressional districts are most deadly in the country for people walking. What responsibility do members of Congress bear for what happens on the streets and roadways in their cities, counties, and states? And, most importantly, what can they do about it? 

The 2024 total of 7,080 people struck and killed while walking was higher than every year from 1982 to2020. Despite recent small year-over-year decreases, the overall trend line since 2009 is a steady upward arrow. As Dangerous by Design 2026 shows, this crisis has unfolded in part because our nation’s streets are dangerous by design, built primarily to move cars quickly at the expense of keeping everyone safe. 

The crisis won’t end until those in power—including members of Congress—upend that paradigm and refuse to accept business as usual. And they are in luck—the federal transportation program that they oversee expires at the end of this year, and the next Congress will be tasked with replacing it with a new five-year law.

The role of Congress

Congress writes the laws that govern every federal dollar that states receive. But its members have repeatedly neglected to require agencies receiving the windfall of taxpayer dollars to measurably improve transportation safety. Congress has decided that states don’t need to be held accountable for producing such terrible safety “results” that lag far behind those of almost the entire developed world. Congress has enshrined our current federal approach to safety in law, an approach largely defined by small, difficult-to-access, and competitive safety programs that can’t possibly fix the problems perpetuated by the billions that are building a network of roadways that are dangerous by design. 

If members of Congress actually want different results than those in the chart above, they should use their legislative authority only to support transportation legislation that rewards good performance and refuse to pass laws that impose no penalties for continued poor safety performance. More on that in a minute.

We’re also dealing with an administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) that has sought to undercut existing safety efforts by removing data-backed solutions from its websites, rescinding previously awarded grants to local communities, revising its roadway safety strategy to focus on nonsense like “reducing congestion,” and weaponizing the incredibly useful Safe Streets for All program to focus on things other than proven safety strategies. If USDOT is going to keep failing to take safety seriously, Congress should step up its active oversight of USDOT’s implementation of the law that Congress passed in 2021. 

Members of Congress also have a powerful bully pulpit and can take influential stands on proposed policy changes or projects to prioritize safety above all else. They can: 

• Go to bat for the local street or transportation department that is improving safety by changing existing street designs—whether temporarily or permanently. 
• Back their local elected leaders when they make changes that prioritize safety for everyone, even when those changes make a small minority of people upset. 
• Help defend the use of proven, data-backed countermeasures in state or local street design to produce slower, safer streets. 
• Show up in local communities by participating in Week Without Driving or World Day of Remembrance events, joining local walk audits, and touring some of the changes worth celebrating. 
• Keep the spotlight on an issue that rarely gets enough attention. And back in D.C., they can create consequences for those who continue to ignore safety and incentives for those who lead. 

Here are five other specific actions Congress can take. Keeping in mind that 25 percent of all pedestrian fatalities occurred in just 50 (11 percent) of congressional districts, those members should be scrambling to lead the way on every single one of these actions.

1. Direct the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to require states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to have goals that progressively decrease roadway fatalities: Title 23 Section 148(c)(2)(C) requires states to adopt performance goals for safety, and states will set fatality goals for increasing roadway deaths, which is antithetical to the purpose of performance targets.
2. Require grantees to improve roadway safety: Until we solve the pedestrian safety crisis, safety with accountability should be the top priority on all projects built with federal funds. 
3. Conduct research and provide evidence-backed guidance for roadway design: This includes updating guidance to protect pedestrians, like making it easier to set context-sensitive speed limits and requiring that the posted speed and design speed be the same. 
4. Support better Complete Streets policies: Create better Federal policy that gives Complete Streets power and flexibility to localities, not to the United States Department of Transportation.
5. Give professionals the freedom to experiment: Localities know their transportation systems best. The federal government should give communities the flexibility and resources to build safety projects.

What the House’s BUILD America 250 Act did and did not do

The House of Representatives’ key transportation committee did advance a five-year proposal to reauthorize the federal transportation program this summer, though the House is unlikely to take up the BUILD America 250 Act (BUILD Act) before this Congress is officially dismissed in January. But unfortunately, the BUILD Act would do nothing to make improving safety a centerpiece priority across the entire program, and would do very little to reverse the U.S.’s roadway safety crisis. 

To put a finer point on it, see that list of five actions above? The BUILD Act wouldn’t move any of those forward. When the next Congress takes this work back up in 2027, they should throw the BUILD Act in the trash and start fresh. 

Points #1 and #2 above should be the bare minimum for the next reauthorization: Require states and MPOs to actually set goals to improve safety outcomes, and require them to get there with real penalties if they fail. (And provide rewards for those that make progress!)  If Congress managed to do those two things, it would move the needle in a real way. Congress needs to reorient the federal transportation program around safety above all else and prioritize the safety of the most vulnerable people. 

If anything, the BUILD Act would make our safety problems worse by supercharging highway spending and giving states even more flexibility in how they spend funds. This is precisely how we got into this mess in the first place: telling states that they have to prioritize safety but also congestion reduction, vehicle throughput, freight movement, economic development, infrastructure condition, and scores of other “top priorities.” When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

The question before the next (120th) Congress now is whether the BUILD Act is the best possible starting point for a new reauthorization proposal, or whether lawmakers should start from scratch to produce something better.  Tell Congress it’s time to put people’s safety first.

One thing is for certain: If you do what you’ve always done, you’re gonna get what you always get. So if members of Congress are interested in getting something different, they will need to do something different. That means leaving the BUILD Act in the past and rethinking the entire program that has produced so much death and so many injuries by design over the years. 

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