Who Bears the Risk? Understanding Mobility Inequality

In 2023, more than 8,600 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in the U.S., with many more injured.

Such injuries have climbed over the past decade, fueled by streets designed for cars, distracted driving from mobile phones, and larger vehicles with high hoods that strike people at chest height.

But not all residents face equal risk. National studies show Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately killed while walking.

Our new research, published in Cities & Health, investigates this disparity through a study of pedestrian and cyclist crashes in Boston. We define mobility risk as the likelihood of being struck while walking or biking.

We find that injuries are far higher in neighborhoods with mostly residents of color and lower incomes. We also show that in predominantly white, higher-income neighborhoods, a large share of injured pedestrians and cyclists come from other communities—often communities of color.

Using Boston EMS ambulance data from 2016 to 2021, we analyzed nearly 3,500 pedestrian and cyclist crashes involving city residents. Neighborhoods with the lowest white population shares (≤10 percent) saw 5.7 crashes per 1,000 residents and workers, compared with 1.6 per 1,000 in neighborhoods with the highest white shares (≥77 percent).

Strikingly, about half of crashes involving residents of neighborhoods of color occurred outside their home areas, versus 35 percent for residents of white neighborhoods.

These findings highlight mobility risk as a public health disparity. At a national scale, they point to the importance of commuting infrastructure within neighborhoods of color, as well as the infrastructure that links those neighborhoods to elsewhere in a city.