The April 2018 monthly report from the Traffic Research Unit at UNM further confirms the 2018 trend of fewer overall traffic fatalities and higher percentages of those deaths being those trying to walk on/along/near our roadways.

Meanwhile, to our immediate west, the City of Phoenix is making both regional and national headlines with its sickening rate of killing those walking there. And the trend isn’t just in the Southwest, as noted in an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (an insurance industry organization) report released yesterday, one that noted:

“Pedestrian deaths have reached the highest level in 28 years,  largely because of the nation’s appetite for fast arterial roads in urban-suburban areas and the ubiquitous SUVs that rule them…”

So what are we going to do about this, Albuquerque, State of New Mexico, Phoenix, the United States of America? If this epidemic were viral or bacterial, we’d have everybody from the CDC to the school nurse at the elementary school down the street engaged in attacking the problem.

Maybe we need more observations like this:

The silence of Phoenix City Council — from every member — on #CompleteStreets as pedestrians are mowed down almost daily in their city, is deafening.#VisionZero #urbanismhttps://t.co/yQp538zhGQ

— Sean D. Sweat (@PhxDowntowner) May 8, 2018

And, being a blog called “Better Burque,” it’s best that we make the simple change from above to: What are we going to do about this epidemic, Albuquerque City Council, Mayor Keller, Governor Martinez and NMDOT? As this is a public health crisis, let’s also ask the same question to the New Mexico Department of Health all the way to the school nurse.

We’ve got a big problem on our hands, our hands, everybody’s hands, and we’ve got to work, and work together, to significantly address it. BB tires of noting it over, and over and over. It’s well past time to act.