In Chicago, traffic violence is landing hardest on communities already burdened by health inequities. Black Chicagoans are nearly four times likelier than White residents to be killed in a traffic crash, according to city data obtained by WTTW News. Despite making up about 29% of the city’s population, they accounted for 61% of traffic deaths in 2021, while White residents, a third of the population, represented just 13% of fatalities. Latino residents are almost twice as likely as White Chicagoans to be killed in a crash, underscoring how transportation systems mirror racial health disparities.
Age compounds the risk. People 70 and older are more than 1.7 times as likely to die in a traffic crash as those ages 20 to 69, a pattern that, alongside racial gaps, alarms public health leaders. “Traffic-related mortality disproportionately impacts people of color … what we do not know is why,” said Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo “Simbo” Ige, calling traffic safety “complex.”
Researchers point to a wider national pattern. A Governors Highway Safety Association report found American Indian/Alaska Native people had the highest traffic death rates, with Black Americans next. A Harvard-Boston University analysis concluded racial and ethnic disparities in traffic deaths are even higher when accounting for exposure on the road, finding Black Americans on bikes were 4.5 times likelier to be killed than White cyclists, and killed while walking at twice the rate of White pedestrians.
Ald. Daniel La Spata argues that victims “look like the people that we care about from an equity perspective,” warning, “We cannot claim in the city to care about equity if we don’t care about traffic violence.”
See: “Black, Latino and Older Chicagoans More Likely to Die in Traffic Crashes, Data Shows” (January 6, 2025)
