How Likely You Are to Get Killed by a Car, Depending on Its Speed

It ’s simple-minded physics really : The faster a car is get when it hits you , the more potential you ’ll be vote down . But there ’s a correlation between the speed of the gondola and the likelihood you ’ll be killed , especially when you take age into retainer . Just 5 miles per hour can make a striking deviation in whether you live or die .

Aninteractive chart made by ProPublicauses information from afamous 2011 studythat collected four years of US car vs. walker crash information . This chart is not only the skilful illustration of that datum I ’ve ever ascertain , it also adjusts for age — older Americans are less likely to recover from injuries get in a crash .

If cars are journey at 45 miles per hour , which is a fairly received speed for many cars to be traveling on major street in the US , any soul being off is more probable to be killed than to survive .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

But if the speed is reduce by just 10 miles per hour , which I would argue would be a nigh unperceivable speed reduction from the number one wood ’s perspective , the opportunity of being killed plummet . Now about half of all senior pedestrians would survive , and the probability of a 30 - year - previous being kill go from 1 in 2 to 1 in 4 . Those are much ripe odds .

Pedestrian advocates like to say “ Twenty is plenty ” to illustrate that busy urban areas should never have swiftness limits over 20 miles per hour . When you look at how dispirited the fatality rate is at that speed , it ’s light to see why this is such a proficient idea . 93 percent of all the great unwashed hit would survive a crash at 20 miles per hour .

earthbound - detection systems on cars are already attempting to prevent these form of collision , but they do n’t knead fast enough to alarm drivers at very high-pitched speed . Which is whybetter street designcan help slow driver down and make walkers more visible , not just with speed bumps , but with a whole range of tricks know as “ traffic calming . ” Eventually cars might not even be allowed to speed . When paired with a geofencing technical school , you might see car that are n’t able to drive any faster than 20 mph when many footer are present . Of of course by that meter , gondola probably wo n’t be drive by man at all .

William Duplessie