Philly pedestrian hit-and-run deaths at ‘all time high' once again

More Philadelphians died in hit-and-run crashes last year than ever before, according to officials.

In 2022, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia said hit-and-run incidents had reached an "all time high," when the city saw 34 such incidents.

According to numbers from the Philadelphia Police Department, last year, the city saw 39 deadly hit-and-run crashes.

Already this year, police in Philadelphia have investigated four hit-and-run crashes that left someone dead.

It's a distressing trend that has been on the rise for several years.

Hit-and-runs on the rise

In 2020, Philadelphia saw 143 deadly crashes and, of those incidents, 29 of them involved a hit-and-run, according to police data.

But, the following years: 2021, 2022 and 2023, all saw the exact same amount of crashes that involved death -- 118 each year, according to police.

And, each year, more and more of these deadly crashes involved hit-and-runs: 21 in 2021, 34 in 2022 and 39 in 2023.

Nicole Brunet, policy director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia -- a group that advocates for road safety for bikers and pedestrians -- said it's a problem with no simple solution.

"It's not an easy fix. There's no silver bullet," she said.

She argued that aside from the individual actions of a driver who leaves the scene of a crash, some roadways encourage speeding and aren't built to allow drivers to see pedestrians and bikers as equals on the roadway.

What could be done to limit hit-and-run deaths?

Brunet said that road design and enforcement of existing laws are some ways that roadways could be made safer. She especially emphasized enforcement, saying legal consequences could impact driver behavior.

"I think that there's a combination of lack of enforcement of traffic violations that have played into the increase in hit-and-runs, because people aren't seeing the consequences of their actions," she said.

Brunet told NBC10 that if driver's escape the consequences of leaving the scene of an crash -- especially when someone involved is killed or seriously injured -- not only is justice not served to the individual responsible for the crash, but the loved ones of those hurt or killed may never have closure.

"Families of victims don't know if the person driving next to them on the street is the person that killed their loved one," she said. "That's a really scary part of this."

One step to potentially help nab drivers who are involved in a hit-and-run would be Jay Alerts. The alert, called the Jayanna Powell Hit-and-Run Direct Notification System, is legislation that has been floating around Harrisburg for some time.

It's named after an 8-year-old Philadelphia girl who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2016, and it would allow body shops throughout the area to be notified about hit-and-runs after they occur, to enable the shops to contact law enforcement officials if a vehicle matching the description of a vehicle involved in a hit-and-run crash shows up at their doorstep.

Brunet said this legislation needs to make it through Harrisburg and, ideally, would become a national law to prevent drivers involved in hit-and-run crashes from fleeing across state lines.

"This is something we should definitely be looking at nationwide," she said. "That's why Amber Alert is nationwide. This should be treated in the same way."

Also, she said, legislators should be looking at finding ways to provide safety on the roadways to more than just those inside a vehicle. In America, she said, regulations are all about keeping people in a vehicle safe, rather than being focused on the safety of pedestrians.

Other countries, she said, are investigating safety features for pedestrians, like requiring vehicles to have certain braking technology, speed governors and other initiatives.

"This is part of hit-and-runs, it's part of crashes overall, it's part of why we are seeing an increase in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities," she said. "Vehicles are heavier, they are larger and they are more high performance and that together is a really dangerous crux. And, we aren't seeing regulation on the national level to limit that."

Still, Philadelphia has seen some improvement in lowering traffic deaths recently.

Philly has seen success in cutting down traffic deaths

For example, in 2023, Vision Zero -- which describes itself as a a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a roadway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic -- touted a 34% reduction in crashes that caused death or serious injury across Philadelphia.

Yet, as of August of last year, the project saw 84 overall traffic deaths -- which was on pace to match the 124 overall traffic deaths from the year before.

That's far too many, said Vision Zero Program Manager Marco Gorini.

"Last year was a really bad year for pedestrian deaths overall," he said. "That's something we are really, really laser focused on right now. We want to get that trend turning around and get that going down."

According to Vision Zero's most recent annual report, across the city about one of every seven crashes involves a pedestrian, and of those crashes, a third result in a death or serious injury.

Gorini noted that in 2022, the last full year that they had a full data set, Philly saw 59 pedestrian fatalities -- that's nearly half of all traffic deaths that year.

Hit-and-runs, he said, are a huge piece of that.

The 'universe of severe crashes'

"Hit-and-run crashes are a problem that we are trying to find some solutions to, because we want folks to stay on the scene so we can understand fully why that crash happened," Gorini said.

According to Gorini, Vision Zero meets regularly with police to discuss why these types of crashes are happening and to look at factors that went into these incidents to "address underlying causes."

Where they have seen the most success, Gorini said, is when they focus on efforts to tamp down speed -- like speed cushions or red light and speed cameras -- giving drivers more time to see and react to any issue that could lead to a deadly crash.

"When you add that speed into the equation, you don't have that sort of ability to save the victim in that case," he said.

Gorini argued that roads designed to slow down drivers and speed cameras can "take some of that impact out of those crashes."

As an example, Gorini said that a recent report showed that a speed camera program on the Roosevelt Boulevard is responsible for saving potentially 36 lives since 2020.

"We had a survey done that showed just the huge impact that it has had," he said.

Based on these findings, he said, they are looking for new corridors where speed cameras could be placed in order to, potentially, save lives.

"Seeing it go down while the rest of the city has unfortunately gone up, I think, has really pointed us in, you know 'this is a solution we need to see in other parts of the city as well,'" he said of the program.

Overall, he said hit-and-run incidents are part of "the universe of severe crashes." Gorini also said that Vision Zero wants to see them all come down.

"We think where we really need to be focused on is taking speed out of the equation," he said.

Gorini also named strict enforcement of existing laws and more stringent design to help control and slow traffic to prevent crashes as important factors in limiting hit-and-run fatalities throughout the city.

"I think it's all of the above, really," he said.