Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
Last month, I had the misfortune to be the victim of a serious car collision, and the good fortune to survive with minor injuries.
I was driving alone on a warm weekend evening, following the speed limit and all other rules of the road, when I felt a heart-stopping thud from somewhere behind me, then a rapid, sickening shift of gravity. The impact was hard enough to throw my car off balance, and it rolled three times before coming to a stop.
Fortunately, the body, airbags, and seatbelt all worked as designed to keep me safe. I exited the car to find myself bloodied but with no broken bones – a brief hospital trip confirmed that my worst apparent injury was an easily stitched cut on my lip. The driver who hit me was also mostly unharmed.
I count myself extremely lucky that many factors went my way that night: I was in a safe vehicle, on a 30 mile-per-hour street, with little traffic and few obstacles around, and in close proximity to emergency services. I’m (reasonably) young and don’t have a heart condition. The vehicle that hit me was a commuter vehicle, not a semi truck. None of my family members were in the car with me. It could have been much worse.
112 worst-case scenarios every day
Not everyone is so lucky. Not long before my accident, not far from where I grew up in Wisconsin, two young people on a motorcycle were killed by a drunk driver. Last Sunday, another drunk driver rolled through a restaurant patio in St. Louis Park, killing two people and wounding nine others.
Statistics tell us that, overall, traffic deaths are far lower in both absolute and per capita numbers from their heyday in the 1970s. Much of that can be attributed to improved safety features in vehicles and the seatbelt laws on the books in almost every state. But over the past decade, traffic deaths have been rising again, with an estimated 40,900 lives lost nationwide in 2023 – on average, 112 every day.
As part of the Toward Zero Deaths initiative, Minnesota has a goal of no more than 225 traffic fatalities by 2025. Unfortunately, the state has already seen 297 traffic deaths in 2024, more than the same time last year. Bucking the trend in 2025 will be a heavy lift.
Drivers aren’t the only ones – or even the most vulnerable ones – at risk in these accidents. Most, like me, emerge mostly unscathed. But if you’re hit by a car as a pedestrian, you’re in far more danger, a danger that has recently increased. Pedestrian deaths in the U.S. have risen by a whopping 77% since 2010, though they’ve mostly held steady in Minnesota.
One obvious factor: the increase in the size of popular vehicles by about 1,000 pounds since 1980. The most popular vehicle in the U.S. then was a compact sedan, today, it’s the Ford F-150 pickup. The added weight means that when collisions happen, they happen with more deadly force for those on the receiving end. Higher cabins also mean that it’s harder for drivers to see the road in front of them. And while the rapid growth in electric vehicles is good for the climate, EVs tend to be heavy, and we need to be very careful about how we build and deploy them to protect those along their path.
All of this is to say that, for all the progress we’ve made at making roads safer, we’re not close to zero deaths. We’re not even moving towards it. And because so much of our land, so much of our economy, revolves around the movement of vehicles, the danger of traffic collisions is one of the most universal environmental issues in our country today. As the pollution from vehicle tailpipes is heating up our planet, the movement of those vehicles also threatens our lives.
No easy solution
There isn’t a silver bullet for this problem. Collisions happen for dozens of different reasons, on all types of roads, and at all times of the day.
We know that cutting intoxicated driving helps, but it’s not the only factor – most collisions, including most fatal collisions, don’t involve a drunk driver. We know that smaller vehicles are less likely to cause injuries to others, but somewhat perversely, some insurance companies incentivize buying larger vehicles because they keep their occupant safe, if not those around them. And we know that drivers’ cell phone use is a huge contributor to crashes, so education on these
As someone who works on protecting the planet for a living, I think the most effective thing we can do in the long term for road deaths – and the tremendous externalities of car traffic, including climate and plastic pollution – is to put people first. We can’t expect those who might want or need to travel without a car to do so unless our transportation system makes it more convenient.
That can include reducing four-lane urban roads, notorious for their high rates of speeding, to three lanes. We can construct off-street bike and pedestrian paths. We can invest in bus lanes and other transit options. We can stop the ever-expanding growth of highway lanes, which end up increasing traffic rather than decreasing it. We can put some of the vast acres of parking lots across our country to better use.
I don’t harbor any illusions that we can suddenly persuade a car-dependent nation of 330 million people to drastically reduce their driving. I don’t know for sure that any solution I’ve alluded to would have prevented my accident last month.
But progress starts somewhere. It starts with a few less vehicle miles traveled on busy, hazardous roads in Saint Paul. It starts with a few individuals, too inebriated to drive on a Friday night, having fast and easy transit available to bring them home. It starts with an easier and safer car-free trip to the park for the elderly, for children, for those with disabilities.
I appreciate what Minnesota has accomplished in investing in safer infrastructure, education, and public transit. Now, I’d like to see us truly lead the way toward zero traffic deaths.