Still looking for remainder of 2015 data, but a perusal of UNM’s Traffic Research Unit website shows the following in terms of overall traffic fatalities and pedestrian fatalities since 2006 in New Mexico:
NM Traffic Fatalities:
2006: 484
2007: 413
2008: 366
2009: 361
2010: 349
2011: 351
2012: 366
2013: 311
2014: 386
First Nine Months of 2015: 213
First Nine Months of 2016: 306
NM Pedestrian Fatalities
2006: 70
2007: 52
2008: 40
2009: 41
2010: 34
2011: 36
2012: 58
2013: 55
2014: 73
2015: Pending
First Nine Months of 2016: 52
The just released September 2016 figures illustrate a continuation of the ongoing very grisly overall pace, surpassing the recent high of 2014 and going back to the 00s, a time of significantly more vehicle miles traveled. More pointedly, the 2016 pedestrian figure looks to possibly overwhelm the especially gruesome high of 73 deaths in 2014.
Events of recent days, with so many traffic/pedestrians incidents in ABQ I can’t quite keep track or link to all of them, would indicate were definitely in for recent era records. A few days back, the Albuquerque Journal ran an Associated Press story with NM-infused data and headline that might give one the indication we’re on the traffic fatality mend here.
No.
We’re not.
Be safe out there, everybody.
Better Burque 
Indeed. It’s a common perception, even among people in the field who should know better, that “it’s just drunks stumbling in front of cars.”
As if Albuquerque were the only city with drunks, and that must explain our dubiously distinctive position near the top of the list of cities deadliest for peds.
It’s the infrastructure, and the drunks are just the unfortunate canaries.
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I’ve got a call into the Traffic Research Unit to find out both 2015 information and any further demographics they might compile. Looking bigger, what I/Better Burque/somebody really needs to do is a lengthy case-by-case study of, say, one year in pedestrian deaths here. The 2014 Denver Post piece linked in this previous Better Burque post: https://betterburque.org/2016/05/23/pedestrians-and-hit-and-run-grim-statistics-and-ghosts/
does about the best job I’ve seen in personalizing these incidents. Without such detail and personalization, these victims will remain something less than human to us and common perceptions will linger. Speaking of the Denver Post, one of its reporters was struck and killed just last month. http://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/01/denver-post-reporter-struck-killed-car/
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