Pedestrian Safety Remains a Growing Concern

One program, which is part of the Smart Growth America group, is the National Complete Streets Coalition. They have some incredible information regarding pedestrian safety in America’s largest Metro areas. Unfortunately, Nashville, Memphis, and Chattanooga, as well as Tennessee in general, do not fair very well went it comes to the safety of pedestrians. In 2016, Nashville ranked as the 37th most dangerous Metropolitan area in the country according to information put forth by the National Complete Streets Coalition.

In Nashville, between 2005 and 2014, 209 pedestrians were killed in the Nashville Metropolitan area and 759 pedestrian fatalities in Tennessee overall according to the information from the National Complete Streets Coalition (the website even has the exact location for each pedestrian fatality for the time period noted above). So for that ten-year period, almost 21 pedestrians are killed each year in Nashville. That is almost 1 pedestrian fatality every two weeks. If you have walked the streets in Nashville this is not surprising. Almost everyone has a story of a close call when walking off a curb or walking the sidewalk by an exit from a parking garage. It is not always simply an inattentive driver or pedestrian who does not look both ways that cause these horrific collisions of vehicle and pedestrian. Often, the roads or intersections are simply poorly designed or not utilizing necessary traffic control devices.

If you or someone you know has been involved in such an accident, you might feel overwhelmed with the calls from the insurance company and their questions and paperwork while trying to recover from your injuries. Know that you have rights.