Walk tall, Kansas Citians -- we're ahead of St. Louis, Denver and Los Angeles at something. But look both ways before you cross the street because the KC metro outranks those towns on something called the "pedestrian danger index" -- meaning you're more likely to get run over here than in, say, West Hollywood.
In November, the lobby Transportation for America issued a study ranking cities according to PDI. The report, titled "Dangerous by Design," puts Kansas City at No. 20 among U.S. metros with populations of at least 1 million. That's not a good thing.
According to the report, which collected data in 2007 and 2008, KC metro pedestrians were killed at a rate of 1.18 per 100,000. Transportation for America arrived at KC's PDI -- 84.6 -- by dividing the fatality rate (1.18) by the percentage of people who reported in 2000 that they walked to work. Here, the latter figure was 1.4 percent of metro workers. This table in the report puts it in terms familiar to anyone who has biked to work or crossed an East Side street lately: 10.7 percent of the KC metro's traffic fatalities over the study period were pedestrians.
The report names the Orlando-Kissimmee metro, in Florida, most dangerous,
with a PDI of 221.5. That's an impressive number, whatever it means.
Minneapolis-St. Paul's PDI is just 22.3, making it the safest of the 52
cited communities. (Read the full "Dangerous by Design" PDF here.)
quick and very nonscientific attempt to correlate the TFA study with
car-crash stats led Plog to Allstate's annual safe-driver survey, which
uses data collected from the insurance company's claims. And Allstate
oughta know -- its ads always put actor Dennis Haysbert (left) out on
the street, on foot, with just a jacket and a paycheck to protect
him from heavy traffic. The 2009 rankings, issued in July, put KCK at No. 15 (on this
list, higher means safer) and Kansas City, Missouri, at No. 30. The
best drivers in the country? Allstate says they're in Sioux Falls,
South Dakota, which has way fewer walking targets. Orlando, Florida, is
a dismal 146 on the Allstate list -- just ahead of No. 148, Atlanta,
which the TFA study ranks 10th deadliest for pedestrians.
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