OKLAHOMA CITY — Trends are showing pedestrian fatalities and injuries down in the inner city, but up among suburban and unhoused populations.
That’s all while the City of Oklahoma City planners continue implementation of the wide-reaching, pedestrian-focused BikeWalkOKC plan, and continue compiling and planning for the Vision Zero initiative aimed at eliminating pedestrian traffic fatalities in the city entirely.
Those efforts, including extensive MAPS funding directed toward pedestrian-oriented infrastructure and road improvements, have resulted in a clear decrease in traffic collisions involving pedestrians and cyclists.
But while once-problematic and dangerous areas of the inner city have seen marked improvement, new trends are showing concerningly increasing numbers of pedestrian-involved collisions in suburban areas and along state highways and a particular rise among unhoused and transient city residents.
“We’re seeing commuting patterns changing and the nature of how people move around the city changing,” said Justin Henry, Program Planner in the city’s Transportation Department. “When you see changes like that, you see an increase in car traffic and commuter traffic in kind of expected places, and that can mean an uptick in pedestrian injuries and fatalities in those places.”
Overall decrease
Available statistics show a clear decrease in the overall number of pedestrian traffic fatalities throughout Oklahoma.
The 2023 report from the Governors Highway Safety Association – a nationwide non-profit populated by official state highway safety departments across the country – shows Oklahoma with the sixth highest percentage drop in pedestrian traffic fatalities in the nation with a 25% decrease compared to 2022.
More localized numbers for Oklahoma City haven’t yet been made available, but Henry is confident that city numbers will show the same trend.
Oklahoma City Free Press confirmed with OKCPD that detailed, demographic breakdowns of pedestrian traffic injuries and fatalities are compiled by the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office, and that those reports typically require a full year from the end of a calendar year to be released. The most recent data and reports currently available on the OK Highway Safety Office are for 2021.
“I do think we’ll see a dip for the city in 2023,” he told OKC Free Press by phone, “especially as more sidewalks are being built and more crosswalks. I think those things are really starting to have an effect.”
The MAPS 4 budget provides more than $96 million for sidewalks, bike trails, and streetlights to improve safety conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, and many of those projects have been underway in recent months and years.
However, Henry also believes that the city’s troubling rise in pedestrian injuries and fatalities between 2020 and 2022 was spurred at least partially by pandemic-era driving habits.
“This is an odd thing, but as the traffic went down during COVID, because people were commuting less, speeds went up,” he explained. “And so our overall number of crashes didn’t go up, but our number of fatalities went up pretty significantly. So we think that people were driving faster at that time, and speed always ends up being the biggest factor in whether it’s an injury crash or a fatality crash.”
Suburban trouble spots
As speed is often seen as the biggest factor in pedestrian fatalities, Henry explained that, while slower speed limits and new sidewalks have curbed fatal collisions in the inner city, suburban roads, and state highways to the far north, south, and west in Oklahoma City have been seeing a rise.
“One of the things that our Vision Zero planning has started to uncover is that our non-interstate highways tend to be some of our worst trouble spots,” he said. “Roads like 23rd Street east of I-35 and also Mustang Road, those have really high speed limits and it’s unfortunately where we’re starting to see a lot of pedestrian fatalities and just a lot of traffic fatalities in general.”
Another factor is simply the expectation of people on foot around Downtown and the city center serving to slow drivers down in a way less commonly seen on suburban roads where pedestrians aren’t expected to be walking.
“There are still accidents where pedestrians are being hit in Downtown areas,” Henry said, “but they’re a lot less likely to be severe injuries or fatalities just because they’re being hit at slower speeds because drivers are more aware and know to expect pedestrians.”
Unhoused risk rising
As BikeWalkOKC and other citywide safety efforts have begun to take shape, Henry said that bike commuters and recreational pedestrians have seen the biggest safety increase, according to internal data trends.
The one demographic that has experienced the sharpest rise in pedestrian fatality risk is the city’s still-increasing unhoused population.
“I don’t think it was the case maybe five years ago, but it’s really crept up in the numbers,’ Henry said. “We don’t have a lot of fresh data from 2023 yet, but we suspect that’s continuing, from what we’re hearing from police. It’s definitely a bigger problem than it used to be, and it gives the city even more reason to emphasize the Key-to-Home program trying to solve some of the homeless issues that we have.”
To help address this troubling trend, Vision Zero planners have been partnering with Oklahoma City Police for outreach efforts aimed at increasing safety for the city’s unhoused and transient pedestrians, particularly at night, when a majority of those collisions occur.
“One of the things the police have started doing is going into encampments around the city and passing out reflective bracelets,” Henry said. “And they bring pamphlets and try to do a little education there as well. It’s always a bit of a tough pitch, but they’re trying to do a little bit more for prevention there.”
Upcoming awareness month
As studies have shown, one of the most effective avenues to increased pedestrian safety is raising awareness, education, and attention for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike.
As BikeWalkOKC and MAPS aim to reconsider street designs and sidewalk availability, and as the more sweeping Vision Zero plan takes shape to decrease fatalities, the city will be partnering with the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG) to increase awareness and education next month.
“October is Pedestrian Safety Month,” Henry said. “I’m not sure exactly what we’ll be putting together yet, but we’ll be partnering with ACOG to do some promotion and some very public-facing stuff to really get out into the community.”
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
