Examining Pedestrian Safety in Sierra Madre

A national advocacy group that looked at a decades worth of data ranked the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area as number 27 in a list of the 52-most-dangerous areas for pedestrians nationwide.

But Sierra Madre seems to be doing its part to improve that score, with only one pedestrian death recorded in the last decade.

The group, Transportation for America, mapped out the more than 47,000 pedestrian deaths in the country from 2000 to 2009. 

According to their figures, there was only one pedestrian killed in Sierra Madre during that time.

That incident was the death of a 78-year-old woman that occured on Nov. 3, 2002, on Baldwin Avenue just south of Sierra Madre Boulevard. There has not been a pedestrian fatality in Sierra Madre since that 2002 incident.

The full Transportation for America report notes that 12 percent of total traffic accidents involve pedestrians and suggests that the main cause of pedestrian deaths are roads that are poorly designed for pedestrian safety.

It makes a number of recommendations on how to fix the problem, including expansion of sidewalks, trails, and bike lanes, as well as prioritizing walkers and de-prioritizing the speed of traffic in designing side streets and connector roads.