There was a great bit on the show Adam Ruins Everything about how laws penalizing pedestrians came into being when cars came onto the scene.

Worth noting (from the report):
Nationwide average pedestrian deaths: 1.53
DC: 1.37
NY: 1.33
WA: 1.06
Mass: 1.04

Lowest were very cold states:
Minnesota: 0.27
Nebraska: 0.48
Iowa: 0.61

Highest (strong car culture? high amount of elderly?):
New Mexico: 3.55
Florida: 2.96

Also worth noting: small sample size. WA went from 32 to 41. Does this represent a massive cultural shift? Or just random noise of a small sample size? That said, the nationwide 6% number is likely large enough to be trusted.

Sorry Matt, we're not allowed to do things like "analyze numbers" or "look at data" here.

If you don't have a relevant picture, consider not adding any picture at all.

The increase pedestrian deaths is probably due to population increase.

Matt, 32 and 41 are not *samples*. A sample is a subset selected from a population by some (hopefully) well defined method, like random chance. The numbers of deaths, 32 from January to June of 2014 and 41 from the same months of 2015, are a census or enumeration: they account for every single event. Not a sample of all the pedestrian deaths.

What you're talking about is statistical noise, or unexplained variation. You might have a point if you were talking about say, the number of homicides in Seattle, which can go from 4 in one year to 7 the next year and 5 the year after that. But these pedestrian numbers are an order of magnitude larger than that.

@6 We can discuss whether 1/2 a year of data is a sample or a census, but let's drop pedantry and talk about what the numbers mean. An order of magnitude better than a census size of 4 doesn't tell me much about how much meaning we can get from that number. The national numbers of thousands of pedestrian deaths that have been increasing fairly steadily for years is a disturbing trend. But it's difficult to get much insight from two fairly small* numbers. In a state of close to 7 million pedestrians, it's hard to know what to make of a difference of 9 deaths.

Let's take a look at the raw pedestrian death data for WA (total for the year, not reported for 2015 yet):
2008 64
2009 62
2010 63
2011 68
2012 75
2013 50
2014 78

Looking just at 2014 compared to 2013 would be alarming - deaths increased by 56%! But then again they decreased by nearly as many between 2012 and 2013. My point isn't that this data is useless, just that it's tough to do much with the information at a local level.

* but way too high of course. it's tragic that we have so many of these "accidents"

@2 - re: the two states with high fatalities, I suspect your suspicions might be correct (car culture, elderly). I also wonder how that can be linked to poverty as well; so many live carless in areas with poor infrastructure (no sidewalks, large streets that encourage risky crossing, etc.)? Of course I only jump to that conclusion because being a pedestrian in those areas has the appearance of danger, but I don't know if analysis would back that up.

24 pedestrians were struck and killed by cars last year in San Francisco alone, which is terrible, but not at all surprising.

Oh, I'm the pedantic one. Got it.

Even if the data doesn't support it, anecdotally, I agree with it. I have witnessed an obscene amount of disregard for cross-walks, pedestrian right of way, etc all over Capitol Hill and downtown.