Study ranks KC metro 20th deadliest for pedestrians

Walk tall, Kansas Citians — we’re ahead of St. Louis, Denver and Los Angeles at something. But look both ways before you cross the street because the KC metro outranks those towns on something called the “pedestrian danger index” — meaning you’re more likely to get run over here than in, say, West Hollywood.

In November, the lobby Transportation for America issued a study ranking cities according to PDI. The report, titled “Dangerous by Design,” puts Kansas City at No. 20 among U.S. metros with populations of at least 1 million. That’s not a good thing. 

According to the report, which collected data in 2007 and 2008, KC metro pedestrians were killed at a rate of 1.18 per 100,000. Transportation for America arrived at KC’s PDI — 84.6 — by dividing the fatality rate (1.18) by the percentage of people who reported in 2000 that they walked to work. Here, the latter figure was 1.4 percent of metro workers. This table in the report puts it in terms familiar to anyone who has biked to work or crossed an East Side street lately: 10.7 percent of the KC metro’s traffic fatalities over the study period were pedestrians.