🚶 Pedestrian & Cyclist Fatalities Near Transit Stations
Explore NHTSA FARS fatality records within 800 meters of transit stations nationwide. All stations and all fatality locations are shown on the map. Select an agency and station, then click Analyze to zoom in, see concentric distance rings, and review statistics and annual trends for that station. Zoom out at any time to compare nearby stations.
Annual Fatalities by Mode
About This Analysis
This tool draws on the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the authoritative census of fatal motor-vehicle crashes on U.S. public roads. Each record represents one fatality and includes the precise crash location, time, lighting conditions, and road type. Only pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are shown; vehicle occupant fatalities are excluded.
What We Measure
The map plots every pedestrian and cyclist fatality recorded within 800 meters of a transit station — roughly a ten-minute walk — alongside stations in the Atlas where one or more fatality has occured. Each dot is drawn at the crash geocode reported in FARS. Selecting a station draws three concentric rings at 200 m, 400 m, and 800 m to help visualize proximity to the platform. The station detail panel reports total fatalities, separate pedestrian and cyclist counts, average annual fatalities by mode, and the peak year for each mode over the most recent ten-year window.
- Blue dots — All transit stations in the Atlas
- Red dots — Individual pedestrian fatality locations
- Orange dots — Individual cyclist fatality locations
- Green dot — Currently selected station
How the Analysis Works
FARS records are pre-processed offline and spatially joined to the station database, with the straight-line distance from each crash to its nearest station stored in meters. At startup, the application loads the full joined dataset into memory and builds a global map cache — so all station and fatality markers are available immediately when the page loads, with no per-request database queries.
When you select a station and click Analyze, the API filters the dataset to the most recent ten years of records for that station. Pedestrian and cyclist records are separated by the FARS mode field and tallied by year to produce the trend chart. Trend direction (Increasing / Decreasing / Stable) is calculated by splitting the ten-year window into two halves, comparing the average annual count in each half, and applying a ±10% threshold: a change greater than +10% is flagged as Increasing, less than −10% as Decreasing, and within that band as Stable. Each fatality dot on the map carries a popup with the crash year, month, time of day, lighting condition, intersection type, victim age, and distance to the station.
Why This Matters
The streets immediately surrounding transit stations are among the most heavily used pedestrian environments in any community, yet they are often among the most dangerous. Research on pedestrian and bicyclist safety near transit stops finds that the concentration of people on foot in these first- and last-mile corridors creates a disproportionate share of crash risk — and that the areas within 400 meters of a station warrant particular attention for safety countermeasures.
The broader national trend reinforces the urgency. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, drivers struck and killed approximately 7,148 people walking in the United States in 2024 — nearly 20% above the 2016 level and a pace roughly seven times faster than U.S. population growth over the same period. Between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose 80% while all other traffic fatalities increased just 13%.
Transit agencies have both a unique opportunity and a direct stake in this problem. Unsafe access corridors suppress ridership; improving them has been shown to generate returns well above their cost. This atlas makes the geographic pattern of fatal crashes visible at the station level, so planners, advocates, and agency staff can identify where the risk is highest and make the case for targeted investment.
Important Notes and Caveats
- FARS records only fatal crashes. The true scale of pedestrian and cyclist injury risk is substantially larger than what appears here; serious and minor injuries are not captured.
- Fatality locations are geocoded to the nearest intersection in FARS; minor positional offsets from the actual crash location are possible.
- The station selector is limited to stations with at least one recorded fatality within 800 m. Stations shown as blue dots on the map with no associated fatality records are not necessarily safe — they may simply fall below the threshold or outside the available data years.
- Distance is measured as a straight line from the crash geocode to the station coordinates. Actual walking distance along the street network may differ.
- Data covers 2015–2024. Trend calculations use the most recent ten years available.