In 2024, more people were killed by vehicles in the city of Los Angeles than were murdered. This happened in 2023 too. The numbers: 302 traffic fatalities against 268 homicides. Traffic deaths outnumbered homicides for the second consecutive year. Los Angeles is, by the most basic measure, deadlier as a road than as a city in the traditional sense of the word.

Of those 302 deaths, 170 were pedestrians — people on foot, killed by people in cars. That's more than half. And that number, while slightly down from 185 in 2023, is nearly double the 88 pedestrian deaths recorded in 2015, the same year the city launched Vision Zero — an initiative that explicitly promised to eliminate traffic deaths entirely by 2025.

Instead, deaths almost doubled.

This is the context in which we ask people to walk — to take transit, to go car-free, to trust the city with their bodies. And it is the context in which that trust is being broken, daily, in crosswalks, at bus stops, and on sidewalks.

The Numbers, Year by Year

The 2024 numbers are often framed as an improvement. And they are — slightly — over the record year of 2023. But zoom out and the picture is stark. In the entire 2010s, total traffic deaths in LA never exceeded 261 in a single year. Every year from 2021 onward has exceeded that number. The mild improvement of 2024 leaves us at a level that would have been considered a crisis a decade ago.

Who Is Dying: The Age Disparity

Traffic violence does not fall evenly. The data on who dies walking in Los Angeles reveals a clear and troubling pattern around age.

Older adults are dramatically overrepresented. Pedestrian fatality data consistently shows that seniors — people aged 65 and older — account for a disproportionate share of deaths relative to their share of walking trips. In cities with comparable data (LA's own age-disaggregated pedestrian fatality data lags by several years), seniors in urban environments routinely account for 25-35% of pedestrian deaths while making up a far smaller share of foot traffic. The dynamics are cruel and obvious: longer crossing times needed, slower response time to sudden threats, reduced resilience to trauma when a collision occurs.

The Streets Are For Everyone advocacy group, which tracks LA pedestrian fatality data closely, identifies pedestrians aged 50 and older as one of the two primary high-risk groups in Los Angeles — the other being youth aged 29 and under. The city's streets most endanger the people least equipped to survive being hit by a car.

Children are a separate and equally urgent story. Pediatric pedestrian deaths in LA — children struck while walking to school, crossing streets near parks, navigating routes adults designed for cars — continue to constitute a significant share of total pedestrian fatalities. The most dangerous intersections in the city, several of which cluster in South LA and areas with the highest density of families on foot, are often near schools and transit stops.

The Crosswalk Illusion

There is a widespread and dangerous belief that a crosswalk is a safe place to cross. It is not a guarantee — it is a marking. In California, drivers are required by law to yield to pedestrians in marked crosswalks (CVC 21950). In practice, this law is routinely and fatally ignored.

The most common collision factor cited in pedestrian fatality investigations is not actually the driver's fault on paper — it's "pedestrian failed to yield outside of crosswalk." But the second most cited factor is driver's failure to yield at a crosswalk. Drivers hitting people who are where they are legally supposed to be, doing what they are legally supposed to be doing.

The particular danger of left and right turns at intersections cannot be overstated. A driver turning left or right at a green light has the right of way over cross-traffic — but not over pedestrians legally crossing with the signal. This is where a significant share of crosswalk fatalities occur: a driver focused on the gap in traffic, not on the person stepping legally off the curb. If you walk in this city, this is the moment to watch for. Make eye contact with turning drivers before stepping out. Do not assume that the walk signal means you are seen.

The Stopping-Short Problem

There is a specific and underreported danger that pedestrians navigating busy LA streets encounter constantly: vehicles stopping short of the crosswalk line, sometimes stopping in the crosswalk, forcing pedestrians to walk around or behind them — often into the path of vehicles in the adjacent lane.

When a car stops past the limit line into the crosswalk, pedestrians are forced to either walk in front of it (invisible to cross traffic) or squeeze behind it (into active lanes). This is not a minor inconvenience. It creates a genuine collision risk at the moment a person is supposed to be most protected. California law requires drivers to stop before the limit line or crosswalk — enforcement is nearly nonexistent.

The problem compounds at multi-lane intersections where a driver in the near lane stops for a pedestrian but a driver in the far lane does not see the pedestrian and does not stop. This "multiple threat" crash scenario kills people in LA every year.

Scooters on Sidewalks

The proliferation of e-scooters across Los Angeles has added a new category of risk to what should be the safest space for pedestrians: the sidewalk itself. Under California law, e-scooters are not permitted on sidewalks — they must be ridden in bike lanes or, where bike lanes are absent, in the road. In practice, this law is largely unenforced, and scooters on sidewalks are a consistent and daily hazard for older adults, children, and people with mobility disabilities in particular.

Scooters traveling at 10-15 mph on a sidewalk represent a serious collision risk for pedestrians who may not hear them coming and cannot move quickly enough to avoid them. The risk is highest near transit hubs — the exact locations where people are most likely to be walking — and in commercial corridors where scooter use is heaviest.

This is not an argument against scooters. Scooters are a legitimate and useful part of the car-free mobility ecosystem. It is an argument for riding them where the law says they belong — in bike lanes and roadways — and for the city to take enforcement seriously rather than leaving it entirely to social pressure that clearly isn't working.

Vision Zero: The Accountability Gap

In 2015, Los Angeles launched Vision Zero with a mayoral executive order. The goal was explicit: zero traffic deaths by 2025. The city missed the deadline by approximately 302 lives in 2024 alone.

An independent audit commissioned by the city in 2024 found that Vision Zero had largely failed — underfunded, understaffed, and missing the implementation of its own recommendations. Of the Mobility 2035 plan's road safety improvements, only 3% had been implemented as of 2022. Speed camera enforcement, which research consistently shows reduces pedestrian fatalities, was authorized by state law in 2023 but LA is targeting 2026 for its rollout — more than a decade after the city promised action.

The good news — and there is some — is that the 2024 numbers, while still devastating, represent a genuine decline from 2023's record. Renewed enforcement focus and some infrastructure improvements appear to be having a modest effect. But "better than our worst year" is not a standard that should satisfy anyone.

What You Can Do

Individually, the rules are simple: cross in marked crosswalks, make eye contact with turning drivers before stepping out, stay visible at night, never assume a driver has seen you just because they should have. These are imperfect protections against a system that is not adequately designed for your safety — but they are the protections available to you now.

Collectively, the lever is advocacy. Organizations like Streets Are For Everyone (streetsareforeveryone.org) and Streets for All are doing direct public pressure work on the city's traffic safety failures. They need bodies at City Council meetings, signatures on petitions, and the political signal that Angelenos who walk — who choose to navigate this city without a car — will hold their elected officials accountable for the streets they inherit.