By james art In a study by the National Complete Streets Coalition, the Birmingham metro area was listed as the 39th most dangerous city for pedestrians, ranked by deaths per 100,000 people.
No other city in Alabama makes the top 50. Jefferson County alone has about 33 pedestrian fatalities in 2023.
However, this study includes the entire Birmingham region, where about 83% of the population lives outside the city, where less than half of Jefferson County’s pedestrian fatalities occur.
When adjusted for just the city of Birmingham, the pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 people would be about 8.13, a number that would be 45% higher than the highest rate or most dangerous city in this study.
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Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates believes most of these deaths are avoidable, saying, “Pedestrians struck in Jefferson County usually aren’t because they are where they are legally allowed to be.”
Many of these deaths occur at night on highways or areas where there are no sidewalks. In about 1/3 of these the pedestrian was intoxicated and an unknown number of these accidents, as many were hit and run, the driver may have been impaired.
“It’s not cyclists being hit or someone who is necessarily being hit on a crosswalk where they had the right of way to cross.” Usually they’ve pulled into that lane of traffic as a pedestrian and they don’t have the right of way,” Yates said.