Age of pedestrians is also a factor. Young children may not fully appreciate their risks when crossing streets. Older pedestrians may not have the reaction time to avoid being hit or the speed to cross a street quickly enough. This is especially true when crossing wide boulevards without islands halfway across.

There is another form of auto vs pedestrian to consider. In Pennsylvania, we have a large number of accidents where no on is "at fault." Drivers all over the state hit 4 legged pedestrians (usually without, but sometimes with antlers). Obviously the deer don't know rules of the road or when to cross and drivers suffer the financial consequences of damaged and destroyed cars and trucks. They may also be injured in such accidents. On the other hand the deer suffer the ultimate penalty. Eventually, through natural selection, we may have deer that are smarter, less likely to cross highways, etc.

Someone once suggested that drivers would be more careful if they didn't have seatbelts and there was a spear mounted on the steering wheel aime at the driver's heart.

As an aside, I had a friend who moved from California years ago, where cars are apparently expected to stop for pedestrians, even if they step into traffic outside crosswalks. He was nearly run over.

It might be interesting to change the actual participants in this particular line of study to bicylcists and vehicles. From my perch in the building the majority of cyclist ignore the traffic laws or even social norms that motorized vehicles follow. For example, at my little intersection. It is very difficult to make left turns across traffic, in all four directions. One left turn is even protected, but the pedestrians don't follow the crosswalk signs most of the time on that side, it backs traffic up. Most of the time it seems a lefte turning driver has to wait for the light to turn yellow or even red. Rarely does the traffic that now has the green light honk their horns. From my observations, cyclist throw out the norms that most people driving motorized vehicle use. They don't wait for the red lights or they even ride up the lanes of on coming traffic, fly around stopped cars waiting to make the left turn.

This information seems to be born out in several articles of late about how, because of higher gas prices, there are more cyclist on the road. Since the increase, there have increased number of fatalities. But it ranges from the driver of the motorized vehicle to the cyclists fault. I am sure you could find sufficient statistics on that front.

The most awkward and dangerous moment walking usually comes when I am stopped at a crosswalk and a driver is stopped in the right turn lane and my light turns green. Often enough, the driver has started moving as or just after my light turns green.

I live in the Phoenix metro area, and I personally know two people that have hit pedestrians – to no fault of their own – and I was on the scene seconds after a pedestrian was hit and saw the carnage.

This seems like a high ratio of first/second hand knowledge of pedestrian deaths.

Phoenix is the 5th largest city in America. We are geographically spread out more than most other cities, much like SoCal, so we drive more than the average American. We have a high homeless population because of our climate.

In all 3 deaths that I mentioned above, the pedestrian was drunk, 1 was homeless and the other 2 were vagrants but not technically without homes.

How normal is it for someone in a large city to have this much 1st or 2nd hand knowledge of pedestrian accidents? I'm thinking it's peculiar to Phoenix, LA and possibly San Diego, though I haven't done any research on that yet.

And for a trivial bonus note, the pedestrian death I happened upon was the man the local Bishop Thomas hit and fled.

Most non-sociopaths don't want to hit anyone regardless as to who will have to bear the risk of loss – the driver's insurance or the the pedestrian. Certainly, no pedestrian is looking to get hit by a car, particularly because some subset of the non-economic injury suffered will not be compensated and another 1/3 of any recovery will get eaten up by an attorney.

Because of insurance, btw, drivers are already in a moral hazard situation. They bear only part of the costs of their own negligence. If one wanted better driving, outlawing liability auto-insurance would be the way to go.