Commentary authored by Matilda Bekoe.
Every October, Nationwide Pedestrian Security Month encourages transportation companies and security organizations to remind motorists to decelerate and look ahead to folks strolling.
In 2024, 7,080 pedestrians have been killed in visitors crashes throughout the US, in line with the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration. Greater than 71,000 have been injured. That quantities to roughly one pedestrian demise each 74 minutes.
These figures have renewed consideration to the numerous components of pedestrian security. NHTSA describes its Secure System Strategy as together with safer folks, safer roads, safer autos, safer speeds, and efficient care after crashes. Driver training belongs inside that broader dialog.
Consciousness campaigns can encourage warning, however their messages usually fade after the marketing campaign ends. Pedestrian security training also needs to be linked to a second that reaches almost each motorist. Driver’s license renewal gives that chance. It’s also a sensible setting for explaining guidelines which have modified since a motorist first realized to drive and for correcting widespread misunderstandings about pedestrian areas.
Stopping pedestrian deaths requires safer crossings, decrease speeds, higher lighting, accessible infrastructure, and efficient enforcement. One more doubtlessly invaluable intervention receives far much less consideration. Governments seldom reassess what drivers know or present structured alternatives to replace that information.
An on a regular basis driveway encounter illustrates the issue. A driver could reverse whereas looking forward to approaching autos however fail to verify the sidewalk for a kid using a bicycle, an older grownup strolling, or an individual utilizing a wheelchair. Utilizing federal crash information collected from 2002 via 2007, NHTSA estimated that backover crashes involving all car varieties resulted in roughly 292 deaths and 18,000 accidents yearly. In that very same estimate, kids youthful than 5 accounted for 35 p.c of the fatalities, whereas adults aged 70 and older accounted for 26 p.c.
These incidents are tough to trace as a result of many happen on non-public property, together with driveways and parking tons, and might not be totally represented in customary roadway-crash databases. Backovers signify just one a part of the broader pedestrian-safety drawback, however they display how routine driving conditions can expose critical gaps in consciousness.
These gaps have grow to be extra consequential as streets have modified. Communities have launched bicycle lanes, raised crossings, pedestrian-refuge islands, and visitors calming options. These designs could not have existed when many motorists have been initially examined. Electrical bicycles and scooters have additionally created new interactions.
Visitors legal guidelines and advisable practices proceed to evolve. Nevertheless, in lots of states, license renewal stays largely an administrative course of involving documentation, imaginative and prescient screening, and fee of a price.
Hawaii’s expertise demonstrates how lawmakers are starting to look at this subject. Throughout its 2026 session, the Hawaii’s Legislature thought-about Home Invoice 2020, which proposed requiring sure license-renewal candidates to finish a road-safety course and written examination. It additionally would have approved random written testing of different candidates.
The Home handed one model of the invoice on March 10, 2026. The Senate subsequently amended the proposal and handed it on April 14. Two days later, the Home formally disagreed with the Senate amendments, and the chambers didn’t approve a closing model earlier than the measure died. Though the proposal was not enacted, it raised an vital nationwide query. Ought to renewing a driver’s license additionally contain renewing important security information?
States don’t must require one other full street check. A short on-line module might handle crossings, driveways, bicycle lanes, nighttime visibility, and interactions with rising transportation modes. Situation-based questions might check sensible judgment as an alternative of memorization. States might make the module common or goal it in line with driving historical past.
Schooling alone can’t finish pedestrian deaths. Communities nonetheless want safer streets and significant enforcement. Nonetheless, renewal provides state governments recurring contact with almost each motorist. That contact is an underused instructional alternative. A renewed license ought to signify greater than permission to proceed driving. It ought to mirror a renewed understanding of the accountability that driving requires.
Matilda Ohenewaa Bekoe is a PhD pupil in Geography within the Division of Geography and Environmental Research at New Mexico State College. Her analysis focuses on energetic journey, walkability, transportation fairness, environmental justice, and creating safer mobility environments for youngsters and communities.
