Iowa cities work to keep pedestrian fatalities low

The number of pedestrians killed in crashes on Iowa roads fell last year, bucking a national trend. It was a welcome decline after two years of increased pedestrian deaths in the state — but there is worry that the number is creeping back up this year.

In 2022, 17 pedestrians were killed in crashes across the state, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation. As of Friday, 15 pedestrians had been killed this year.

Jan Laaser-Webb, Iowa’s state safety engineer, spoke with The Gazette two weeks ago, when there had been 13 pedestrian deaths. She said she’s concerned about the trend.

“I hope that this year settles down. We're already at 13 pedestrian fatalities, and that bothers me that we're already at 13,” Laaser-Webb said. “When I say that, I know every single person is somebody’s somebody, so I don't want any (fatalities), but I end up talking about mitigating circumstances.”

Among those killed on Iowa roads this year was Brett Moravek, a 38-year-old Marion resident who was struck July 18 by a sport utility vehicle as he walked along Highway 30 near Mechanicsville in Cedar County.

In May, Corey Hite, a 45-year-old Iowa National Guard soldier from Cedar Rapids, was struck as he jogged through an intersection on Melrose Avenue in Iowa City. He died two weeks later. The driver who struck Hite, Jonathan McCaffery, 17, was cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk. McCaffery pleaded not guilty to the simple misdemeanor and a trial is set for Tuesday.

Last year’s 17 fatalities in Iowa marked a decline from the previous two years. In 2021, 32 pedestrians were killed in Iowa, and in 2020, 30 pedestrians were killed.

Nationally, the number of pedestrian fatalities has been rising, about 13 percent from 2020 to 2022. Excluding Oklahoma, which did not provide data to the national Governors Highway Safety Association, the number rose from 6,626 in 2020 to 7,508 in 2022. The reason for the Iowa’s 43 percent decline over the same period is difficult to pin down.

Laaser-Webb said it could be a return to more normal numbers after an increase during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I think we had a surge of pedestrians and bicyclists who were just getting out and getting some air, and we had an uptick in speeds, even in residential areas,” she said.

Pedestrian-related crashes are minimal when compared with total traffic crashes in Iowa. In the last five years, there have been 2,057 pedestrian-involved crashes, of about 271,000 total crashes, according to Laaser-Webb.

“We want to keep pedestrians in that tiny percentage … because of how vulnerable those pedestrians are,” Laaser-Webb said. “The average human is going to be severely injured if the car is going anything over 23 miles an hour. So basically, you’re looking at trouble anytime you’re outside of a very residential area.”

How can pedestrian deaths be prevented?

Designing streets that increase pedestrian safety can involve many factors, from making sure there are well-lighted crosswalks in places where people regularly walk, to adding road elements that make drivers slow down — like roundabouts and speed bumps — according to road design experts.

Pedestrian safety on roads is difficult to address at a state level because state-controlled roads are highways not meant to have pedestrian traffic, Laaser-Webb said.

The Iowa DOT currently is working on completing a vulnerable road user safety assessment, which all states must include in their strategic highway safety plans at the end of this year as part of the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. The assessment will evaluate how the state can better work with cities and counties to ensure the safety of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, like bicyclists.

The responsibility of creating pedestrian-focused road designs on streets where people regularly walk usually falls on cities, but cities sometimes work with the state DOT to determine how to best accommodate pedestrians and to get funding for projects.

City efforts

In Cedar Rapids, updates to pedestrian facilities on roads are often planned when other construction is happening in the city, said Ken DeKeyser, the Cedar Rapids city engineer.

“Just about any kind of road design or development plan can’t go ahead without pedestrian accommodations. So we not only look at some of the technical aspects, like the pedestrian audible warnings, but also we look at the widths of the sidewalk, the distance away from the road, ramp slopes and other things so that anybody with varying abilities can use the sidewalks,” DeKeyser said.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice performed a compliance review in Cedar Rapids under the Americans with Disabilities Act and issued a settlement agreement noting several aspects of roads and parks in the city that should be updated to improve accessibility, including the slope of some pedestrian ramps and the addition of audible tones at pedestrian intersections.

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“They basically gave us a consent order where we had to upgrade a number of our pedestrian ramps and other facilities. We’ve been doing that ever since, and that’s a multi million-dollar effort every year, to build things, repair things, bring things up to a current standard,” DeKeyser said.

The Justice Department closed the file on the settlement agreement in 2019 “due to the adequate demonstration of progress in making accessibility improvements,” according to the city’s website. While most of the required improvements have been completed, there are several projects that still are under construction or in planning stages.

Cedar Rapids also has been working in recent years to add road features in busy pedestrian areas that draw attention to pedestrians. Those include raised crosswalks that double as speed bumps, or crossing signs with flashing lights that turn on when a button is pushed.

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There are two of these flashing signs — called rectangular rapid flashing beacons — on First Street SW, in front of the Ingredion plant in Cedar Rapids.

Gary Netolicki and Ann Junge, who work at Ingredion, said the flashing sign makes them feel safer coming to and from work, especially in the mornings when they arrive before the sun is up. There is less traffic on the road at that time, but the cars that are out often aren’t driving the speed limit, Netolicki said. The flashing lights add a sense of security in the dark.

“The lights just draw attention to the crosswalk,” Junge said.

“I think it’s definitely beneficial,” Netolicki added.

Cedar Rapids currently has about 25 rectangular rapid flashing beacons at crosswalks throughout the city, said Cari Pauli, a Cedar Rapids traffic engineer.

The flashing signs usually are added in areas with high pedestrian traffic, or areas where the city anticipates there will be high traffic.

“We’re always looking at things that we can do to make it safer for pedestrians, especially in locations where we have a lot of pedestrians crossing. Usually when we’re upgrading signals or redoing roadways, we’re always bringing them up to standards which does include a lot of pedestrian safety aspects,” Pauli said.

The recent addition of roundabouts at multiple intersections in Cedar Rapids also will be a benefit to pedestrians, Pauli said, because roundabouts force cars to slow down and require pedestrians to only cross one direction of traffic instead of two.

Sarah Walz, associate transportation planner for the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County, said controlling the way a road looks and feels can be a better way of getting drivers to slow down than putting up speed limits and signs.

“Driver’s don’t really, I don’t want to say they don’t pay attention to the speed limit, but once you get past that sign, unless you’re looking at your dashboard, you’re not aware of how fast you’re going. Other things are telling you how fast you’re going, like how frequent the intersections are, how narrow the roadway is, how narrow the lane is, how much head-to-head traffic there is,” Walz said.

The organization works in Iowa City and other Johnson County communities to design roads to increase safety, but it can be a slow process, according to Walz.

“While we are designing streets to be lower speed, some of that will take time in terms of how much development there is along the road, how much activity there is along the roadway, things like that. But in Iowa City, and I think generally in the metro area, that is something that our engineers are taking into account,” Walz said.

If there is a serious crash, especially one involving a pedestrian, road engineers in most cities, including Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, will perform an analysis of the roads and intersections involved to determine if upgrades are needed to make the area safer.

The Johnson County MPO performed an analysis at the intersection of Melrose Avenue and Kennedy Parkway in Iowa City, where Hite was hit and killed in May. No major changes are being made as a result, but the city has ordered new crosswalk signage.

“It’s just fresh signs, and some signs in the median, and just adjusting the spacing on some signs so that if it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now,” Walz said.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com