Is Walking Safe?

A sharp increase in pedestrian deaths is fueling a push to make Bergen’s streets less dangerous. It’s starting to work, but more needs to be done.

“She clearly didn’t see me,” says Diane Palmer of the driver of an SUV who nearly hit her in a crosswalk on West Passaic Avenue in Maywood last year. Palmer had just stepped into the crosswalk when, she says, “the car came barreling toward me.” She jumped back to avoid it—a move that may well have saved her from serious injury—but in doing so, she tore her right hip flexor, one of a group of muscles that helps lift the knee. A year later the pain is mostly gone, but what persists is Palmer’s anger that the injury had to happen at all. “If she’d just been paying attention…,” she says of the driver, leaving the sentence to hang, half-finished.

That fractured sentence could be an emblem for our times. Over the past several decades, in Bergen County and across the country, motor vehicle accidents involving pedestrians, many of them deadly, have seen a dramatic increase: In 2023, for example, pedestrian deaths due to motor vehicle accidents exceeded 7,500 nationwide, the highest annual number in 40 years. A 2024 study by the lawsuit funding company High Rise Legal Funding found that New Jersey’s roads are the most dangerous for pedestrians in the country: In the U.S., an average of 17.3 percent of those killed annually in motor vehicle accidents are pedestrians; in New Jersey the percentage is 30.3. And a recent study by the law firm Laborde Earles, looking at the years from 2017 to 2021, found that Bergen ranked 10th on the list of U.S. counties with the highest rates of pedestrian deaths—that is, pedestrian motor vehicle fatalities as a percentage of all motor vehicle fatalities: Of the county’s 180 motor vehicle deaths during the period, 79 of them, or nearly 45 percent, involved pedestrians and cyclists.

Julian Ortiz was one of the luckier cyclists in Bergen. In November 2021, he was riding with a group from the Bicycle Touring Club of North Jersey (BTCNJ). At the back of the group as they approached a traffic circle in Franklin Lakes, he watched as the rest of the group passed through the circle. “I’m keeping my eyes open left to right,” he remembers, “but I see there’s a car approaching on the right-hand side, which means it has to stop at a stop sign.” The car paused, and the driver looked to the right at the other cyclists but didn’t look to the left, at Ortiz. “The car just keeps coming,” he says, “and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ And I get T-boned.” Ortiz, who was wearing a helmet, doesn’t remember if he hit his head, but except for some bruises and lacerations, he was generally OK. His new bike, however, was totaled. Like Palmer, he was angry, he says, “that such a stupid thing could happen, so easily avoidable.”

In spite of harrowing stories like Palmer’s and Ortiz’s and the even more harrowing reports of fatalities and near-fatalities, there’s reason for hope: Over the past three years, pedestrian deaths in Bergen have started to dip, falling from 20 in 2020 to 13 in 2023. “Numbers have improved a bit,” says David Behrend, director of the North Jersey Transportation Authority (NJTA), the federally authorized planning organization for Bergen and other North Jersey counties, “but keeping people safe and trying to drive fatalities and serious injuries down is still the top priority in the transportation world.”

WHAT’S DRIVEN THE RISE

There’s no single factor behind the recent increase, but experts tend to agree that driver distraction is a significant cause. “People are so eager to be up to date on what’s happening on social media that they’ll check their phones while they’re driving,” says Rosemarie Arnold, a personal injury lawyer in Fort Lee. She’s seen many accidents that were caused by drivers who decided to check their phones at a red light and then continued scrolling after the light changed. And our cars themselves have become more distracting, says personal injury lawyer Michael Epstein of The Epstein Law Firm in Rochelle Park. “You have people distracted with the technology in today’s cars, which have a lot more happening on the dashboard than they did even 10 years ago,” he says.

Patrick DiRoma is a partner in the safety advocacy group Bergen Complete Streets, which seeks to use a multi-pronged approach to creating safer roadways for all users. It’s affiliated with the national Complete Streets, which has been active in places such as Orlando, Florida, and Marin County, California. He says drivers aren’t simply distracted. “Since the pandemic hit,” he says, “there’s been a general lack of patience among drivers. I don’t know how much raw data there is to back that up, but it does seem to be anecdotally supported.”

A significant factor in the increase in pedestrian fatalities specifically is the ever-increasing size and weight of vehicles, as more drivers choose SUVs and pickups over standard passenger cars. Those large, heavy vehicles, says Behrend, “are obviously going to do more harm at the same speed than a smaller vehicle.”

TO BRING BACK SAFETY

Like the cause of the recent increase in pedestrian crashes, the potential solution is multifaceted. It includes approaches that have already been put in place, in some areas of Bergen and elsewhere, aimed at lowering—even eliminating—pedestrian and cyclist deaths. One such plan is Vision Zero, a statewide plan whose aim is zero pedestrian deaths by 2040 and which has already been adopted by several New Jersey municipalities, including Hoboken, where pedestrian fatalities have dropped to zero for the past seven years. The plan consists of what the Federal Highway Administration calls “proven safety countermeasures,” which Corey Hannigan, active transportation program manager for the nonprofit advocacy and policy organization Tri-State Transportation Campaign (TSTC), describes as “all kinds of little interesting changes.” One of them is intersection daylighting, whose purpose is to make it easier for drivers and pedestrians to see each other at intersections. It’s a simple strategy that makes it not just illegal but actually impossible for cars to park at the corner of an intersection, usually through the placement of flexible posts at intersections adjacent to crosswalks. The same result could be achieved, says Hannigan, by using the same area for other purposes, like bicycle parking.

Other ways to protect pedestrians include widening the crosswalks to keep cars and pedestrians farther apart and raising the entire crosswalk to the level of the sidewalk. “Basically,” says Hannigan, “that turns the crosswalk into a speed bump, and it’s a reminder to drivers that, ‘Hey, you’re entering a pedestrian space, and you need to be careful and aware.’” Creating pedestrian islands—spaces, often raised, halfway across a crosswalk, for pedestrians to shelter if they can’t make it all the way across—can make longer crosswalks safer. In Oradell, for instance, an island was created on Kinderkamack Road by painting the roadway.

Manipulating stoplights is another way to make crosswalks safer. Bergen County Commissioner Steven Tanelli offers the example of intersections in Fort Lee, at which red lights stop motor vehicle traffic in all directions “to give pedestrians an opportunity to get a head start through the crosswalk.”

So-called traffic-calming measures can help pedestrians in crosswalks and cyclists in roadways stay safe. One of them, says Chris Nowell, a partner of DiRoma in Bergen Complete Streets, is narrowing lanes. Roads in Bergen that are now 12 or 13 feet wide could be narrowed to 10 feet with a bike or multi-use path created on the right. (It’s been proven that narrower lanes cause drivers to slow down.) That path should be clearly designated, which, says David Goldstein, president of BTCNJ, isn’t always the case in Bergen County. It’s important to designate the space for bikers with a painted line and signage that indicates the lane’s purpose; it’s even safter, says Goldstein, to create a physical barrier between the road and the lane.

WILL DRIVERS DO THEIR PART?

Safety-oriented laws can protect pedestrians and cyclists, but only if drivers are aware of them. There’s a law on the books in New Jersey, for instance, mandating that drivers only pass cyclists when there’s at least 4 feet of distance between them. “The biggest problem with the law,” says Goldstein, “is that I don’t think anybody knows about it outside of cyclists.” Sometimes, drivers may know about a law but need a reminder to comply with it. We may know, for example, that we should stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but we don’t always do that. Driver education campaigns can help teach and remind drivers of existing laws, and studies show that these campaigns can make a difference in behavior on the road. They range from signage erected throughout a municipality to fliers distributed through local businesses to police traffic stops. One example of the latter is Cops in the Crosswalk, a program in which a plainclothes officer enters the crosswalk while another officer stands by to nab drivers who don’t stop. Towns can get grants from the state Division of Highway Traffic to implement the program; it’s up to individual municipalities to decide whether to fine offenders or simply give them a citation. Melissa Hayes, senior director of communications and external affairs at NJTA, notes that “warnings are very effective” at changing behavior.

Federal funding is available to help counties and municipalities design and implement pedestrian safety plans. Currently, communities in Bergen County, including Englewood and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in the Meadowlands, are working with the help of federal grants to implement plans they’ve already drawn up. And the county as a whole is in the process of developing a so-called Local Safety Action Plan with the help of federal funding through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Pedestrian and cyclist advocates like Nowell and DiRoma hope these efforts will help to create a safer environment in the future, while public officials like Tanelli note that measures such as widening crosswalks are already having an effect on pedestrian crash numbers.

Whether those numbers continue to go down is dependent, in part, on the dedication of public officials to tackle a complex problem. DiRoma notes that the Bergen County Board of Commissioners has been “open to the idea of Complete Streets, but resistant to what it would take to go through the heavy lift of implementing it on a widespread scale,” which would require a high level of cooperation between the county and its 70 municipalities. Change is also dependent on residents speaking up when they see a need. “If a safety situation in your area needs to be addressed,” Tanelli says, “it’s very important that you bring it to your local municipality, which will then bring it to us so we can work tougher on it.”

“By speaking up,” he says, “you can save lives.”

WAYS TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE

While roadway improvements and changes to the law are essential to making Bergen’s streets safer, pedestrians and cyclists can personally take steps to decrease their chances of becoming the victim of a motor vehicle accident.

Pedestrians should:

• Follow the “WALK” sign.
Many pedestrians cross before the “WALK” message appears if the street looks empty, but they may not be aware of cars about to turn into the road or speeding around a corner.

• Cross in the crosswalk. “There you have the right of way, and you’re in a much safer position because drivers are more likely to see you,” says personal injury lawyer Michael Epstein.

• Be observant. “Even though you have the right of way in a crosswalk, cars may not always stop,” says Epstein. Try to make eye contact with drivers, and put your phone away.

•  Be especially cautious at night. More than half of all pedestrian accidents occur between the hours of 6 p.m. and midnight. Don’t assume that drivers can see you—often they can’t.

Cyclists should:

• Make themselves visible, with bright clothing and—especially important—bike lights. David Goldstein, president of the Bicycle Touring Club of North Jersey. recommends equipping your bike with an intermittently-flashing back light.

• Be road-savvy—which means, says Goldstein, “that you’re constantly aware of your surroundings.”

• Consider riding with a group. “You’re definitely safer relative to cars in a group,” Goldstein advises. For more information on that group, go to btcnj.com.