Public Health

Physical activity is essential to people's health, but dangerous streets and spread-out, sprawling communities prevent Americans from getting enough of it, says the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy.

It's more than a little ironic that in many places, hospitals are some of the worst offenders when it comes to perpetrating unhealthy transportation patterns. Often surrounded by enormous parking decks, hospitals have earned a reputation as isolated institutions hermetically sealed off from surrounding neighborhoods.

Each year the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reports on the top causes of injury-related death for children in New York City, and traffic crashes consistently top the list. That remains true in the newest report [PDF].

Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was killed in Minneapolis while trying to cross an intersection with no crosswalk or traffic signal on a 40-mph road. One witness speculated that Steeber must have had a "death wish."

Last week, the city announced that it is kicking off the school year with the gradual roll-out of all 140 school zone speed cameras allowed under state law. There's good reason for the expansion: Despite drops in fatality rates over the past decade, a report from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows that traffic remains the leading injury-related killer of New York City children.

There's encouraging news out of India, where cities expect to add hundreds of millions of residents in the next few decades but are already choking on traffic congestion and auto exhaust.

Researchers in Massachusetts have concluded that lowering the default speed limit on local roads from 30 to 25 mph would save lives and yield big public health benefits. Even without additional traffic calming measures, a lower speed limit on its own would prevent 2,200 crashes, 1,200 injuries, and 18 fatalities in the state of 6.6 million, according to an analysis of a 25 mph bill considered by the Massachusetts legislature last year. These numbers should be on the minds of New York legislators, who have the potential to save lives with a 25 mph bill of their own.

Why do neighborhood groups -- especially in low-income areas -- have such a hard time influencing the design of major road projects? An interesting case study from the University of Colorado-Denver sheds some light.

New data from the Alliance for Biking and Walking's 2014 Benchmarking report bears out the notion that people tend to be healthier in cities where walking and biking are more prevalent.