Fatal Pedestrian Accidents in Arkansas
Arkansas is a southern state with a population of 2,978,204 as of 2015. The United States has a total population of 321,418,820. With a small population, you wouldn’t expect there to be many fatalities caused by traffic accidents in Arkansas. Yet Arkansas has 17.83 pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents, while the United States has 10.92 pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents. Which means that pedestrian accidents are more common in Arkansas than they are in the United States in general.
When a traffic accident occurs not only the occupants of the car are at risk of death or injury. Those who are walking, jogging, running, or standing on the side of the road are probably most vulnerable to traffic accidents. Of the 531 deaths caused by traffic accidents in 2015, 43 of these fatalities were people walking to work or school or jogging down a road. These deaths account for about 8% of the total traffic accident fatalities. This is a pattern that has been fairly closely repeated since 2011 when 42 of the 551 people killed in traffic accidents were pedestrians.
If you look at pedestrian fatalities in Arkansas by race, you will notice that the majority of fatalities are white or black. In 2014, of the 44 pedestrian fatalities in the state 26 were white, 10 were black, and 8 were of other races. This trend has remained throughout the years.
Another way these types of accident deaths are measured is by county. Pedestrian deaths according to county are for the most part spread evenly throughout the state. In 2015, the majority of these deaths were caused by traffic accidents in Pulaski County, with 8 pedestrian deaths or about 2.04 pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents.