Walking is good for you. Every day, more people experience the wellbeing that comes from simple walks around the neighborhood or to nearby places. Unfortunately, as walking increases, so do traffic fatalities. The development of safe cars and better infrastructure has not yet caught up to the trend of walking. A whopping 3/4 of the crashes occur during the dark hours, at dusk or at dawn.
GHSA reports about an alarming 10% increase in pedestrian fatalities in 2015, of which 75% occur when it’s dark.
GHSA reports about an alarming 10% increase in pedestrian fatalities in 2015, of which 75% occur when it’s dark.
In a new report on pedestrian crash statistics, the GHSA (Governors Highway Safety Association) estimates a 10% increase in fatal pedestrian crashes from 2014 to 2015. Here are some quick facts: …
April is distracted driving awareness month, a subject that is near and dear to us. We keep telling walkers, runners and bikers to make themselves visible with reflectors to help drivers see them in the dark, but drivers also need to be focused on what’s on and along the road!
It’s estimated that 5,000 deaths a year or 16% of all fatal crashes involves distractions mainly from cellphones (texting/talking/downloading music) or passengers. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has put faces to the numbers. See here what distracted driving looks like inside some cars. Hold on: …
How much do reflectors, like the funflector® ones, actually help? The sad truth is that there are no solid numbers available. As far as we know, no one is collecting data on whether or not pedestrians who were hit by cars in the dark, had reflectors or not. However, reflectors have been promoted in Sweden since the 70’s. Insurance companies have given away hundreds of thousands of them over the years, so one has to assume that they do some good and that the repeated giveaways are based on rational business decisions to improve their bottom line. What we have though, are some numbers that we can compare between Sweden and the US, one country where 30-50% of adults wear reflectors and one where very few do. In each country, infrastructure and culture is the same day and night. Sweden has better street lights, but they are rarely enough to make a significant difference to seeing pedestrians several hundred feet away.
So, here are the numbers (pretty rough, but give the order of magnitude): …
Good reflectors should make pedestrians visible from a distance of 125 meters (410 feet), but we wanted to know if we could see our funflector® reflectors from even further away. Would they meet the 500 feet visibility target? However, first let us be clear about why we care so much about safety reflectors:
That is how much of a difference reflectors make! We found a dark street, straight for over 500 feet and with very little traffic. Here is what we saw of a pedestrian facing us with two reflectors hanging from front belt loops.The first image below was captured at 600 feet. We are very excited and pleased with the result since it is very important for us to provide as much safety as possible for our customers. A note of caution though: reality is rarely staged like this, so please wear at least two reflectors, but place one back and one front – OR- one left and one right. You never know exactly how you will be turned the moment the driver needs to see you! Alternatively, put a slap bracelet around your ankle, the visibility from all directions is pretty good unless you carry bags in your hands that hang low down.
Every day, more people discover walking as an easy way to get moving. Did you know that
– 30 minutes of daily walking lowers the risk for diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, cancer and much more.
– Kids walking to school perform better than when getting rides.
– Home prices in walkable neighborhoods increase faster than others.
– Commerce flourish where people walk.
There are an overwhelming amount of information on the benefits of walking for you as an individual and for society. The two videos below condense the information very well and explain why you need to walk and how it all is interlaced:
“The benefits of walking are so good, they are hard to believe”. Listen to Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George C. Halvorson explain the benefits of walking in a 6 minute video.
Urbanist Jeff Speck explains in his TED talk “how America can be more economically resilient, how America can be healthier and how America can be more environmentally sustainable”. You’ll be surprised about how a walkable infrastructure improves health, quality of life and the local economy and how it is all correlated!
Jeff mentions that Portland, Oregon is far ahead of other cities in the US on planning around people, but there is activities in many places. Learn about what’s going on in Oklahoma City, New York,Dallas and Chicago and more generally with redevelopment of urban centers.
As mentioned in the intro, kids who walk to school perform better than when getting rides. Here are the results of some studies:
– Let kids walk to school by University of Buffalo medical school and
– Exercise before school improves concentration in the class room, a joint study by researchers at the universities in Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark, also reported by the Atlantic Cities.
– Check out these fascinating MRI scans by the University of Illinois of kids’ brains after sitting still and walking for 20 minutes respectively!
If your kid’s school doesn’t have a walk-to-school program, consider organizing one!
Walking is good, however, when dusk comes around, the risk of fatal pedestrian-vehicle accidents increases significantly. In the Scandinavian countries, pedestrian reflectors have saved lives for over 40 year. If you are looking for thoughtful and useful giveaways, check out our American-made logo reflectors! Together we can make a difference and we hope you want to join us. The funflector team
This is the 7th year we celebrate Halloween in the US and I keep being surprised about longs lists of Halloween safety tips that circulates in media. When we look at statistics of what accidents actually happens on Halloween, there is one type that stands out: pedestrian accidents. Cars are the number one threat to trick-or-treaters and sadly, Halloween is the deadliest night all year for kid pedestrians. The graph below shows fatalities per day. Look at October 31st! The threat from cars and drivers is real. For every fatal accident, there are also about 10 seriously injured kids…
Child pedestrian fatalities by day of the year. How long did it take for you to spot Halloween? Klick on the image to get to the original article.
Let’s focus on the most important Halloween safety tips that make a significant difference:
#1 – Be Reflective (The Most Important Halloween Safety Tip!)
Here is what you need to know before buying reflector or reflective tape:
The power of reflectors depends on the reflective power per square inch and the size. A lesser quality reflective material needs a larger surface than a good quality material to reflect equally strongly back to the driver. There is no American standard that takes into account both the material and the surface, so we we follow EN13356, a European standard is for visibility accessories for non-professional use. All funflectors are made with 3M Scotchlite (one of the best reflective material on the market) and fulfill EN13356.
How many reflectors are needed for trick-or-treating?
One reflector can make wonders, but it may just as well be on the “wrong” side of the kid when a car comes by. We recommend at least two, one front and one back or one left and one right. We hang 4-5 on our kids, that’s still cheaper than most co-pays at the ER, less pain and more fun! If you use reflective tape, you also need to make sure it’s enough to be seen from multiple directions.
Safety reflectors increase your visibility the most when you hang them correctly – low and dangling!
#2 – Follow Traffic Rules
Most pedestrian accidents happen in the middle of the block. 1. Cross at intersections. 2. Use sidewalks and avoid busy streets without (or add another 3 reflectors to the outfit if you have to walk there). Practice, practice and practice BEFORE Halloween and supervise if your ghosts and goblins can’t handle it. With ADHD kids, you need to practice even more since they don’t always manage to judge the situation with approaching cars in safe manner. PRACTICE all year around!
#3 – Talk Safety with Kids
Studies shows that while most people talk about Halloween safety with their kids, only 1/3 do it every year. You need to talk about it several times in the weeks leading up to Halloween, not only when the kids are about to head out for trick-or-treating, too excited about costumes and candy to listen.
#4 – Educate Drivers
Here are some very good points from the State Farm Halloween Tips that you need to think about as a driver and talk to with friends and colleagues, especially those who don’t have kids at home. 1. Be alert for children and eliminate in-car distractions (cell phones, music, radio, friends,…) 2. Pull in and out of driveways carefully. 3. Slow down! 4. Practice extra caution at intersections and corners. 5. Discuss these and other driving pointers with your teen driver – or hide the car keys. Drivers ages 15–25 were involved in around one-third of fatal accidents involving child pedestrians on Halloween, according to the study.
— That’s it, Let’s Recap —
1. Use reflectors. If you don’t remember how many you need, just think that there can never be too many. 2. Follow Traffic Rules. You should know them, if not: study! 3.Talk Safety with Your Kids – start a week or two BEFORE Halloween 4. Remind Drivers, especially teen drivers, on being careful and alert every single minute they are in the car. So how about the flash light, tainted candy, ration the kid’s candy, inspecting candy and more? In our opinion, they are well meant, but draws attention from the real danger!
…is by far the most risky place for a pedestrian to cross a street. Did you know that?
Sadly, this month, three Libertyville students were struck by cars, while crossing roads at the middle of the block*. We were relieved to hear that none of them were badly injured. A look at statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells us that 76% of fatal pedestrian accidents occur between intersections. Assuming that most people cross streets and roads safely at intersections means that it is significantly more than three times as dangerous to cross streets away from intersections. We have brought up walk-to-school programs before on this blog and believe strongly that, as a society, we do need to get the next generation used to walking and biking more. For health reasons, for environmental reasons and to increase quality of life. Parents may think they do their kids a favor when they drive them to school. In fact, it has the opposite result. More cars lead to more accidents, more exhaust and less exercise. It is time to discuss investing in walk-to-school programs, not just more lanes for cars. We would like to see more parents teaching kids from an early age how to walk safely and we would like to see incentives to keep cars away from schools.
So what do kids need to learn before you can let them loose? Based on the statistics mentioned above , safety precautions can be boiled down to: 1.
Use cross walks! Don’t cross at the middle of the block. Cross walks at intersections are safer than cross walks in the middle of the block.
Use safety reflectors when walking from dusk through dawn. (70% of pedestrian accidents occur during the dark hours.) Those two pieces of advice would go a long way! However, from personal experience, we’d like to add this one:
Before crossing, even if you have a green light, look back to check that the driver in the right turn lane has seen you. Too many are on their cell phones and have no idea that you are there.
* In the article it is stated that the high school student crossed at an intersection. However, right there, the highway has no stop signs, no traffic lights and there is no pedestrian cross walk, which gives drivers a perception of being “in the middle of the block” although there is a small road crossing.
As a parent of three, I feel woozy just thinking about backing over children. My own or someone else’s would be equally horrifying. Our garage is a detached one and in the back of our yard. The turnaround is used by the kids for rollerblading, basketball, hopscotch etc. To avoid any accidents when getting the car out, I require the kids to stand on the lawn, all together in a spot where I can see them at all times. Either I know exactly where all of them are or the car does not move.
Today, 45% of all new vehicles have back-up cameras installed to alert the driver about any obstacle behind the car that is impossible to see otherwise from the driver’s seat. Mandatory back-up cameras in all vehicles have been in the spotlight the last couple of days. The 2008 law on creating rear visibility standards for vehicles by Feb. 28, 2011, has once again been delayed. The plan was to require all vehicles to conform to the new standard by September 2014. Each year, about 228 deaths occur in back-up accidents. It is estimated that half of those could be avoided if all cars had a safety system in place.
We have been wondering for a while how much pedestrian’s lives are worth, so we got out our calculator.
Last Friday night at 6.30, I drove my kids around. You know, picking up one here, dropping off the other one there and still make it to the jump-off of the basketball game of the third. There had been flurries in the air since lunch time so the highway way was slushy and slippery. Ten minutes earlier, at the intersection of two IL state highways, it was so slippery, I couldn’t get the car to stop until several feet past the stop line. Pretty scary considering I was only going 20 mph.
In the middle of the high way, I saw a guy, but only as a dim shadow against the glare from oncoming traffic. He crossed the four-lane highway with a cup in his hand, dressed all in dark. He stopped at the painted median strip, which is also used as a turn lane. That’s where I passed him. I hope he made it over to his car on the other side despite the fact* that:
– more accidents happen in the middle of the block than at intersections (73%)
– more accidents happen during the dark hours than at day light (69%)
– the road was very slippery and it was difficult to stop even at low speed
– visibility was poor
– it was Friday night rush hour traffic (23% more accidents occur on Fridays and Saturdays than on other other weekdays)
– he’s a man (70%)
I wish I had a video or photo of what I saw, but I didn’t want to lower this guy’s odds even more by being a distracted driver… Take a peak at the photos below and imagine snow slush on the road, snow flakes on your windshield and two more lanes.
A pedestrian crossing a dark highway with and without reflectors. The median strip is used as a turn lane for traffic from both directions and is not a safe haven for pedestrians.
I might just be paranoid, but I think I would have walked the extra 300 feet to the intersection and traffic lights and crosswalk. I also wear pedestrian safety reflectors, several if the weather is this bad. After all, every day, 11 pedestrians get killed in traffic and many more injured. For me, it is more important to see my family again than trying to save a minute or two… What would you have done?
We are looking at statistics and wondering about the 3000 pedestrians killed in traffic since last Christmas. What do their families and friends think about the past year without them? Many of them will celebrate the upcoming holidays without them for the first time. What will that be like? Look at all of these pedestrians killed in traffic 🙁 They are people like your neighbor, college or friend or could have been in your family
For each pedestrian killed, there are also 10 injured. Some might have gotten away with a broken leg or foot, others have had to revise their dreams beyond what’s imaginable for most of us. Did you know that 30% of Finns wear pedestrian reflectors regularly? We estimate that if Americans did that, each year about 1500 lives could be spared and 15.000 injuries avoided. That would be 16.000 kids, teens, men and women without shattered dreams of what their life would be like. Each year!
You, your family and your friends only have one life and you need to take care of it! Walking is an easy way to get some exercise, but you need to help drivers to see you if you out after dark (planned or unplanned.) Put some safety reflectors in the stockings this year—not just for the kids. Grandpa needs them, the reflectors will dangle nicely on his walker! College students need them! Your friend the dog walker needs them! Your friend the runner needs them! And YOU are too valuable not to wear any!
Our lightweight soft pedestrian reflectors are easy to send in a holiday card and they make perfect stocking stuffers!
Have fun and be safe! Elisabeth
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