Pedestrian deaths have been on the rise around the nation, and Anchorage is no exception. In 2025, 15 pedestrians were killed by vehicles, the same number as in 2024. Both years marked the city’s highest pedestrian death toll in more than a decade.
Brad Coy, head of the Anchorage traffic department, wants to know whether people would choose to walk a mile from their home to the store.
“If your answer is, no, that sounds completely insane and dangerous,” he said, “then it's a good indicator that our system is built with the focus on vehicle traffic.”
The fact that the city is designed for cars makes it less safe for everyone else, he said, resulting in things like snow covered sidewalks, and multilane roads cutting through business districts and neighborhoods.
But data from the past two years show there’s one major thing that predicts whether a pedestrian will actually die when they’re hit: the speed of the vehicle. Graham Downey, with the Anchorage mayor’s office, said as that speed increases, the likelihood of death goes up exponentially.
On most of Anchorage’s neighborhood streets, with a speed limit of 25 mph, pedestrians hit by cars have a 90% chance of survival. The speed limit on most of the city’s main roads is 45 mph, but many of us actually drive closer to 55 mph. At that speed pedestrians only have a 10% chance of survival. Downey said that exponential increase is why so many pedestrians are dying on higher speed roads.
“We do know that almost all of the deaths are happening on those 45 mile an hour roads,” he said. “Roads like Tudor, Benson and Northern Lights, or faster roads like the highways. We are definitely seeing that is where the deaths are happening.”
While speed is the biggest predictor of death, the size of the car matters too, Coy said. Bigger cars and trucks are much more likely to kill a pedestrian.
There’s no good data on the size of vehicles involved in crashes in Anchorage specifically, but the national data is clear. Across the country pedestrian deaths are going up as vehicle size increases.
“You look at the mix of vehicles on our streets, you can see this in Anchorage,” he said. “How many of them are your smaller vehicle, low profile hood, versus how many are trucks, SUVs?”
In Anchorage there are a lot of trucks and SUVs. Those bigger vehicles hit people around the midsection and do a lot more damage than smaller cars, which tend to get people in the legs.
So speed and the size of a car can determine whether someone dies, but according to Coy, data shows there are many other things that increase the likelihood that a crash will happen in the first place.
One of those factors is drunk driving. In 2024, drivers were impaired in 25% of pedestrian fatalities. Downey said intoxication is a factor in many accidents, both in terms of the pedestrians and the drivers. But he said the two shouldn’t be conflated.
“That’s something we definitely want to be careful when we talk about. A drunk pedestrian doesn't put anyone but themselves at risk. A drunk driver puts all of us at risk.”
Coy agrees. Anchorage should be designed in a way that people can walk home from the bar safely, he said. Plus, he said, it’s rarely solely the pedestrian’s behavior that causes the crash. There are usually multiple factors.
“When you have the compounding effect of maybe a pedestrian in the road and a driver who's distracted, intoxicated, or something else going on, speeding, that's really when the problems happen,” he said.
There are many other factors that increase the likelihood of pedestrian crashes. Here are just four:
- City design – things like limited crosswalks. In Anchorage, a lot of pedestrians are hit in the road, far from a crosswalk. Coy said that’s because when there isn’t one nearby people will often dart across the road instead of walking the extra distance to cross safely.
- Crash numbers bump up in September and October, when darkness returns but summer driving habits haven't changed.
- Snow is an issue too. It’s not so much about slippery streets as the fact that when snow piles up on the sides of roads it can be hard to see oncoming traffic. And when snow is piled onto sidewalks, people are sometimes forced to walk in the road.
- Traffic rules also come into play. For example, national data shows places that allow right turns on red lights have much higher pedestrian death rates.
The municipality and the police department are working to decrease the number of pedestrians killed each year, Coy said. Police have upped enforcement for drivers who are intoxicated, distracted or speeding. And they’ve increased their enforcement of jaywalking and expanded public education programs. The city has put up more lighting, and they’re experimenting with changes to traffic signals. They’ve also reduced the speed limit on one municipally-owned road.
But other changes are harder to make. All those high speed roads where people are dying? 85% of them are owned by the state. To slow traffic and make other changes to those roads, the municipality has to work with the Alaska Department of Transportation.
Sometimes that process can be frustrating, Coy said, and it can take awhile.
In the meantime, Coy said, drivers can also help make streets safer.
“I would hope that everybody would be able to take this shared experience that we're all having with fatalities and traffic safety issues in Anchorage and say, ‘What can I do individually?,”’ he said.
Maybe fewer pedestrians will die this year, Coy said, if drivers slow down, stay off their phones and don’t drive under the influence.
