Pedestrian deaths are continuing to skyrocket even as the pandemic wanes — and since 2019, the death rate for walkers has eclipsed the rate of population growth by a factor of at least nine, analysts say.

U.S. drivers killed 3,434 people on foot in the first six months of 2022, an increase of 5 percent over the same period the prior year — and a staggering 18 percent increase over the number of walkers who died in early 2019, the last year before the pandemic, according to the latest fatality estimates from the Governors Highway Safety Association.

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Regardless of a community’s size, though, advocates emphasizes that the solution to surging pedestrian deaths across America is the same: dismantling the systemic factors that make American roads, vehicles, and drivers amongst the most dangerous in the developed world, and replacing them with the rigorous Safe Systems approach as outlined in the National Roadway Safety Strategy that US DOT adopted last year. Because if we don’t, the pedestrian crisis is likely to continue — pandemic or no.