Roads designed to move cars quickly through cities are exacting a deadly toll on Black and brown communities, widening racial health disparities tied to transportation policy and urban design. Research highlighted by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies shows that people of color are far more likely to be killed while walking or biking than white residents, even when they make up a smaller share of the population.
In Los Angeles, the imbalance is stark. Black residents accounted for 8.6 percent of the city’s population but represented more than 18 percent of pedestrians killed and about 15 percent of cyclists killed, according to a 2020 Lewis Center policy brief. The numbers reflect a broader national pattern in which pedestrian deaths fall disproportionately on Black and brown communities.
The analysis points to decades of public decisions that favored drivers over residents. “For decades, the United States has prioritized the needs of people driving through cities over the well-being of the people living in them, and largely at the expense of communities with the least political clout,” the article states. Those priorities have left many neighborhoods of color with wider roads, higher traffic speeds, and fewer safety protections for people outside cars.
Pedestrian deaths are not just transportation statistics; they represent preventable losses that compound existing health inequities. Fatal traffic injuries remove parents, workers, and elders from communities already facing higher burdens of chronic disease and shorter life expectancy.
The research underscores that reducing road deaths is also a matter of racial equity. Investments in safer street design and stronger speed enforcement are framed as necessary steps to prevent deaths that continue to fall most heavily on communities of color.
See: “Alarming Racial Gap in American Road Deaths” (May 12, 2023)