One fine day in May, we sent five reporters and two photographers to some of the busiest pedestrian crossings in Quincy. You won't believe what they saw.

Maybe he had the walk signal. Or maybe the driver had the green light. That’s for the lawyers to decide at this point.

What’s it clear is this: Susan Butt’s 24-year-old son had nearly made it across Burgin Parkway and was just a few steps from the curb on the opposite side when the car plowed into him at some 40 mph, sending him over the hood of the car and onto the windshield. He survived with an arm broken in two places, a concussion, burst ear drum and $25,000 in medical bills. He missed two months of work.

"I’m just glad he’s OK, but now I’m worried," Butts wrote on Facebook weeks later. "It will happen again."

She’s right. A Patriot Ledger analysis of state records from 2002 through 2014 found 897 crashes in Quincy involving pedestrians, including 17 that resulted in death. Another six pedestrians have died in just the last 18 months

On average, the analysis showed, a pedestrian is hit by a car in Quincy every five days, with one or two killed in a typical year. Another 44 are injured, leaving many with lifelong disabilities, insurmountable medical bills and missed pay.

"It doesn’t just hit that one person’s life," said Brendan Kearney, spokesman for WalkBoston, a group that advocates for city planning that give priority to pedestrian safety. "It changes friends’, family’s, co-workers’ – the effect goes on from there."

There’s no simple explanation for why cars and people collide so frequently. According to the Ledger’s analysis, more than a third occurred when walkers were in a crosswalk, though the data does not indicate if they had a crossing signal. In about 58 percent of crashes, investigators found drivers were doing nothing wrong. Only in about 1 percent of cases were drivers found to be at fault.

But it doesn’t take a spreadsheet of crash data to see that dangerous things are happening on the streets of this city every day.

Five Patriot Ledger reporters spent the same hour on the same day at some of Quincy’s most hazardous pedestrian crossings last month and saw a dangerous dance between drivers and pedestrians at all five locations. They saw drivers who ignored traffic signs, blew past people in crosswalks and hit the gas through the densest parts of the city to beat red lights. They also saw pedestrians who stepped in front of moving cars, darted through breaks in traffic and navigated heavily congested roads while wearing headphones or glancing at their phone. All of this took place against a backdrop of broken walk signals, worn-away road markings and poorly timed and confusing crossing lights that left pedestrians stranded on traffic islands in the middle of busy streets.

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Those problems are not necessarily different here than elsewhere in the country, but the number of people walking around Boston and Quincy means more are at risk. A 2014 ranking by Smart Growth American found that the greater Boston area, which stretches from Nashua, N.H. to Providence, R.I., was the safest for pedestrian among the nation’s 51 most heavily populated metropolitan areas, in part because it uses a per capita formula based on the number of people who walk to work. The Boston area has more people walking to work than other large metropolitan areas except New York and New Jersey.

Pedestrian crashes in Quincy have also fallen in recent years while rising across the country. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, pedestrian fatalities nationwide have spiked 19 percent since 2009 while overall crash deaths have continued their decades-long decline, thanks in large part to improving vehicle safety. In Quincy, pedestrian crashes peaked at 94 in 2012 – the year five pedestrians were killed by cars in the city – before falling to 69 last year, according to Quincy police data.

Countless factors contribute to pedestrian accidents, but a Patriot Ledger analysis of state crash data for Quincy between 2002 and 2014 shows some trends.



TIME OF DAY

Pedestrians get hit by cars at all hours of the day, but they’re mostly likely to be hit between 4 and 6 p.m.

RIGHT ON RED

Despite some observations to the contrary, nearly half of all pedestrian crashes happen when a car is driving straight down a street, not when it is turning or changing lanes.

AGE OF DRIVER

Eighteen percent of drivers involved in a pedestrian accident between 2002 and 2013 were aged 45 to 54. Seventeen percent were aged 25 to 34.

AGE OF PEDESTRIAN

While older pedestrians are more likely to die from accident injury, younger walkers are the more frequent victims. Nearly 85 percent of walkers hit by cars are under 65.

LOCATION

roughly half of pedestrian accidents victims were hit at an intersection. The other half were hit crossing a street where there was no intersection.

CROSSWALKS

A little more than 31 percent of crashes occurred while the pedestrians was in a crosswalk at intersection and another 3.4 percent at a crosswalk that was not at an intersection. A little more than 10 percent occurred when they were at an intersection with no crosswalk.

CAUSES

Nearly 58 percent of drivers involved in pedestrian accidents were found to have done nothing “improper.” More than 11 percent had failed to yield the right of way to a pedestrian and 6 percent were found to be driving recklessly. Less common findings were excessive speed, fatigue, defective equipment, physical impairment, following too closely and making improper turns.

Source: Massachusetts Department of Transportation

But while crashes are down, fatalities have been ticking back up. No pedestrians were killed in the city in 2013, the year after both crashes and deaths peaked, but one pedestrian was killed the following year and three pedestrians were killed in 2015. Another three pedestrians have died since Jan. 1.

The Ledger analysis of state data found that pedestrian crashes tend to cluster in certain parts of the city: Coddington Street near Quincy High School, Southern Artery near Father Bill’s homeless shelter, Burgin Parkway near the Quincy Center T station and on stretches of Hancock Street near Billings Road and near North Quincy High School and the North Quincy T station.

But by far the most dangerous road for pedestrians is the section of Hancock Street that passes through Quincy Center, which also happens to be the site of the most concentrated development effort in the city in decades, as well as major traffic revisions that will transform one part of Hancock Street into a park and pedestrian throughway. In 2008 the state Department of Transportation ranked it the 10th worst area for pedestrian crashes in Massachusetts. Last year, it ranked 7th worst.

PEDESTRIAN CRASHES BY THE NUMBERS

897 crashes in Quincy involving pedestrians between 2002 and 2014.

69 pedestrian crashes per year, on average, during that period.

23 pedestrians killed by vehicles in Quincy since 2003, including three so far this year.

1.8 average number of pedestrians killed by cars each year in Quincy over the last decade.

1.04 pedestrians in Massachusetts killed for every 100,000 residents in 2014.

21 percent of people killed in car crashes in Massachusetts in 2014 who were pedestrians.

Source: Patriot Ledger analysis of news reports and crash data from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation; Governors Highways Safety Association; Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

A Ledger reporter who spent an hour watching traffic in Quincy Center last month saw a walker hit a button to trigger the signal, then cross without waiting for it to change, keeping on eye on oncoming cars.

Crosswalk signals in the area don’t have a countdown clock, just a blinking hand, leaving many pedestrians confused about how much time they had to cross.

"It’s horrible. It’s so dangerous," said Jennah Young of Brockton, who was walking that day.

Kearney, the spokesman for WalkBoston, said re-timing traffic signals so that they’re more reliable is one way city planners can improve safety.

"If people have to wait more than 90 seconds, they’re more like to cross when it’s perceived to be safe, which may or may not be the right thing to do," he said.

VIEW CHART OF QUINCY PEDESTRIAN ACCIDENTS SINCE 2002