548. Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?

548.为什么美国如此擅长杀害行人?

Freakonomics Radio

社会与文化

2023-07-06

44 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

Actually, the reasons are pretty clear. The harder question is: Will we ever care enough to stop?

单集文稿 ...

  • We made an episode almost a decade ago called the perfect crime.

  • The idea was that if you wanted to kill someone and not go to prison, the best way would be to simply run them over with your car.

  • That's the way it works, especially in America.

  • If you are driving a car and you kill a pedestrian, even if it's entirely your fault, most likely nothing very bad will happen to you.

  • In our legal and transportation systems, the car is supreme and pedestrians don't have much protection.

  • Back when we made that episode, I guess we had a slight hope that presenting the data and discussing the problem might lead to some progress.

  • It did not.

  • In 2014, the year we published the perfect crime, there were just under 5000 pedestrian deaths in the US last year, around 7500 deaths.

  • And its not just the raw numbers increasing.

  • The rate of pedestrian deaths per mile driven is the highest in more than 40 years.

  • Even during the pandemic when driving was way down, pedestrian deaths continued to rise among the worlds high income countries.

  • The US is particularly good at killing pedestrians.

  • The death rate here is much higher than in places like northern and western Europe, Canada and Japan.

  • So today on free economics radio, we're back at it with one simple question.

  • Why?

  • Why are we a world leader in this terrible statistic?

  • The cars we're driving are bigger, badder, faster.

  • The problem of distraction has gotten much.

  • Worse in the United States.

  • We've decided that car movement is really the supreme consideration when it comes to designing our streets.