Transportation
Why Does Florida Have America's Most Lethal Roads?
There’s no simple solution, but the Sunshine State is trying to tackle its astonishing rates of pedestrian deaths.
Florida cities consistently top SmartGrowth America’s ranking of the nation’s most dangerous places to walk. The explanation isn’t as simple as you might think.
Since 2011, SGA’s biannual “Dangerous by Design” report crunches the numbers on their “pedestrian death index”—the rate of pedestrian fatalities relative to the number of people who walk to work—across the country’s largest metro area. This year, it looked at 104 cities, and eight of top ten most dangerous metros are in the Sunshine State. The national average is 52.5; the top metro, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, clocked in at 283.1.