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| Serious and fatal pedestrian crashes by year from Crashes in Ann Arbor. 2025 data is year to date. |
Ann Arbor has an ambitious Vision Zero target of eliminating serious and fatal pedestrian crashes by the end of the year. Despite this, 2025 is on pace to be the worst year for serious and fatal pedestrian crashes in in the city. The data above run through September, and if this report from r/annarbor is correct, another pedestrian was seriously injured by a driver last night. This means the city has already tied 2014's record with 3 months left in the year.
To commemorate this ignoble occasion, I have interviewed Peter Houk who run's the website CrashesInAnnArbor. CiAA is a project that examines crashes in Ann Arbor that result in serious injuries to vulnerable roadway users.
Damn Arbor: Can you tell me a little about Crashes in Ann Arbor? What it is and why you created the website?
Peter Houk: Crashes in Ann Arbor is a project examining traffic crashes on Ann Arbor streets that result in a serious or fatal injury to a pedestrian, cyclist or other vulnerable roadway user. I started it because I was frustrated by how long it took for crash data to become easily available to the public. Depending on when the crash happened, it might have been 18 months before the report was released on the Michigan Traffic Crash Facts website. So a crash could happen in your neighborhood, and the official police report won't be available to the public for at least 6 months and up to 18 months. How many times are you going to drive through that same place before you are informed about the hazardous conditions there?
I was also frustrated about how this delay inhibited a meaningful response to crashes by city departments. I had been told that the city staff would look at all serious and fatal crashes and react to them if necessary, but the results were not shared publicly. Further, if the existence of a crash and the details that contributed to it aren't public, then we are missing an important feedback loop between advocates/residents, their elected representatives, and city staff. Residents who frequent a particular location where a crash has occurred are familiar with it in a way that elected representatives and city staff can't possibly be for every location in the city. Their user experience can help contribute important information about how a location might be made safer. But if these important stakeholders don't know the details of a crash or even that it occurred, they can't talk with their city council members about it in a meaningful way.
DA: What stands out to you in the latest analysis of Ann Arbor crash data?
PH: Two very bad years in a row for pedestrian crashes; two years in a row of improvement for bicycle crashes. It's possible that we won't have any more pedestrian crashes in 2025 (though unlikely). Looking at the past 20 years, we average almost three serious/fatal pedestrian crashes in the 4th quarter of the year. If we continue at that rate for the rest of 2025, the total will hit 15, which we haven't seen since 2014.
DA: 2025 is on pace to be the worst year for pedestrian crashes since you have been keeping track. Do you care to speculate on the causes?
PH: Ann Arbor has experienced a record increase in employment driven mostly by the University, and at the same time our population has remained stable or even declined. So we can assume that more people are commuting into and out of the city each day. This results in more cars driving more miles on city streets, as well as more people walking and biking locally, and more opportunities for conflict; note that most drivers are also pedestrians while they are at their destination. With this unprecedented level of traffic, we need to focus on fixing hazards at crash sites and locations with similar designs and conditions.
We have also let lapse our focus on targeted enforcement at crosswalks, which we did in 2017 and 2018, and which improved driver compliance by over 30% at some locations. We know this works, but we stopped doing it. Similarly, we stopped doing public education, like the A2 Be Safe multi-media campaign, to inform and remind the public about safety on our streets (and other places). We used to have a City Administrator who was a champion for safe streets, but the previous City Council majority fired him in 2020.
And all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a transportation system that still has the fundamental flaw of mixing high speed vehicle traffic with vulnerable users like pedestrians. Posted speed limits are up to 45 MPH on Washtenaw and other streets, and we know that people often drive even faster.
We stopped doing things that worked; we stopped actively promoting a culture of safety for roadway users. None of us should be overly surprised by the results.
DA: Conversely, 2025 is trending as a super safe year for bicyclists on Ann Arbor streets. Do you have thoughts on this phenomenon?
PH: So far in 2025, we haven't received any reports of traffic crashes that killed or seriously injured a cyclist. But we don't usually have many of those in most years. Even if we finish the year with zero (and I hope we do) this apparent decline might be due to year-over-year variation.
But it might also be attributable to the fact that more people are riding bikes. My unscientific observation has been that there are more bikes out there since life returned to normal after COVID. And there were record bicycle sales during COVID when many people were looking for more outdoor activities. Bike counters in the downtown bike lanes show bike traffic increases year-over-year. More riders, combined with some high profile cycletrack infrastructure projects in Downtown, might increase driver's awareness of bike riders throughout the city.
DA: What’s one thing you hope readers will take away from the report you are releasing?
PH: Ann Arbor committed to vision zero by 2025, but we haven't followed through on it. Instead our pedestrians are probably going to have the worst year since we first adopted the goal of zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
DA: Is there anything else you would like to add?
PH: 2025 is on track to be a very bad year; when the official 2025 data gets released next year, it's probably going to be the worst year since 2014. But it doesn't have to be the worst year **on record** if we make meaningful changes now. The city already has some good programs underway like the Safety Corridors where AAPD is doing targeted enforcement for unsafe driving behaviors. I would like to see that program expanded to include targeted crosswalk enforcement. City Transportation Engineering has started taking an active role in analyzing fatal and very serious injury crashes. I would like to see that level of scrutiny applied to all serious crashes as well. We have done media outreach programs and targeted enforcement in recent history, so we should be able to restart them quickly.
We also have in progress right now a study to reconfigure our multi-lane streets. This effort is our best chance to change our streets to have slower but more consistent and smoothly-flowing traffic. If done right, drivers will spend more of their travel time going at slower speeds but less time stopped at red lights. Fundamental changes like these are the way to make sure that 2026 and beyond have fewer serious crashes than 2025. The Ann Arbor Roadway Rightsizing project has a community engagement event on November 19 at AADL.
Also in progress right now, the city is negotiating to take back control of trunk lines (Jackson, Huron, Washtenaw and N. Main) from MDOT. None of the really ambitious changes that we need to keep pedestrians safe will be able to happen until the city has control of these major streets. The negotiation started last year and no updates on progress have been shared recently.
We need to do what we can to keep 2025 from getting worse, and we need that momentum to carry into 2026 so that we can make it the *best* year on record. And anyone who says that won't happen just needs to look at 2014 and 2015--the current worst and best years on record--to see that it can be done.
Thanks for letting me share this with your readers.
