Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.
I have a recurring nightmare in which I’m sitting on an airplane, watching a romantic comedy or more likely a low-budget shark attack movie, when suddenly the plane begins to freefall. I always wake up before the plane crunches onto the ground, but my fear of imminent death by fiery plane crash often sticks with me through my waking hours.
So this last weekend when my news feed was filled with images of a 737 Max 9 airplane with a gaping hole in its side where a panel that sealed a cabin door tore off, it felt like watching my nightmare become reality. What didn’t help is that the airplane was flying from Portland, Oregon, where I live and often fly out of. Extraordinarily, only minor injuries were sustained by a passenger sitting near the hole (no one was sitting in the seat directly next to the panel), so the worst case scenario was avoided.
The incident has now become a reminder of the risks we take every day in order to transport ourselves from one place to another, and the ways infrastructure, regulation, and sheer luck come together to mitigate these risks – and the ways they don’t.
Shortly after the Portland incident, the Federal Aviation Agency grounded all Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft to inspect “cabin door exit plugs, door components, and fasteners.” As of January 8, approximately 171 planes worldwide are still grounded.
This quick reaction to an aviation emergency is a marked departure from the way other transportation disasters are treated. In 2022, 7,508 pedestrians were struck and killed by cars in the United States, according to a report published last year by the Governors Highway Safety Association. This was the highest annual pedestrian fatality rate since 1981.
Where you live matters. About 25% of all pedestrian and cyclist deaths happen on rural highways, according to a 2010 report from the Highway Safety Information System. Speed limits on rural roads are generally higher than in cities, and most of them lack sidewalks and bicycle lanes. The size of vehicles in the United States is increasing, too: As cars have gotten taller and heavier, pedestrians are more likely to die when hit.
In rural Pennsylvania, the small towns where much of my family lives are bisected by fast highways. The main street in Picture Rocks, for example, is also Highway 220. The speed limit decreases from 55 to 35 miles per hour when you pass through town. Data shows that there’s about a 40% chance of death if a pedestrian is struck by a car traveling more than 30 miles per hour. Compare this to a 5% chance of death if a car is traveling 20 miles per hour.
Urban roads are also dangerous. The highway just half a block from my house has one of the highest rates of serious crashes in the entire city of Portland. Between 2015 and 2019, 74 pedestrians and 30 cyclists were struck by cars on this road, called 82nd Avenue. Seven of the nine people killed in vehicle collisions on 82nd Avenue during this time period were either pedestrians or cyclists.
But in contrast to rural areas, cities could have more resources to address this safety problem. In 2022, the city of Portland took over control of the highway from the Oregon Department of Transportation with a vision to install better lighting, add more crosswalks, and improve the public transit options in the area. This project is being funded by the American Rescue Plan Act and funds from the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Portland Bureau of Transportation, totaling $185 million for a six-mile stretch of road.
To put this in perspective: in December of 2023, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the allocation of $645 million to four rural road improvement projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of the five-year Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program. However, the department received more than $7.4 billion in requests from rural and tribal applicants for this round of funding. “The Rural Program continues to be significantly oversubscribed,” said a Biden administration press release.
While road safety should be improved everywhere, rural roads are especially in need of attention, as the number of rural applicants to this program illustrates.
Government efforts to increase pedestrian and cyclist safety have been slow at best, and as the 2022 fatality rate shows, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Unlike a plane that blows a hole in its side mid-flight, pedestrian-vehicle collisions seem to be so common that they barely make the news.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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This post was previously published on The Daily Yonder.
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