Dunlap Research recently worked on the Pedestrian Hit and Run Analysis for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

“Dunlap used preexisting data sets to analyze characteristics of pedestrians and drivers involved in pedestrian crashes and then looked at whether the incident was a hit and run or if the driver stayed on the scene,” Research Associate Dylan Hewitt said. “A goal was to determine if there were any characteristic differences there.”

How many hit and runs are occurring? Is it hard to collect data on hit and runs, or are they prevalent?

“In 2024 alone, almost 7,200 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association,” Hewitt said. “This number is up 19.2% from 2016. 2022 saw the highest number of pedestrian deaths since 1981, at over 7,500. Our dataset covers years up to 2023, and of all the crashes involving pedestrians that we investigated (both fatal and non-fatal), 24% were considered hit and runs. In other words, almost 1 in 4 drivers left the scene of a pedestrian-related crash. Pedestrian fatalities have risen consistently since 2010, so this is an issue that does not seem to be going away.

“While this project was exclusively looking through 2023,” Hewitt continued, “it is a common problem that is only getting worse.”

How do we anticipate the data from this project being used in the future?

“We anticipate law enforcement agencies will be able to use the data to help allocate resources, as a big aspect of this project was looking at counties, zip codes, and census tracts to see what characteristics of locations have a higher likelihood of a hit and run, especially those where the driver left the scene and was never identified,” Hewitt said. “Law enforcement might take those patterns and see the potential need to reallocate more resources into investigating hit and runs in these areas, or to make sidewalks safer.”

What interested Dunlap in this project?

“We've been doing this kind of work forever,” Hewitt said, “but especially with pedestrians. We've done a lot of research with pedestrian crossing zones, looking at pedestrian safety, and adjacent to that, we've looked at safety for children getting off school buses. We have an amazing statistical team who were able to use their knowledge of the census data, and of the traditional crash data such as the fatality analysis reporting system (FARS) and the crash report sampling system (CRSS). Since we have experience with U.S. Census Bureau data, and this project was an interesting way to tie a lot of our areas of expertise together.

“But what really interested us is saving people, and reducing those fatalities, even if it's just by one. Because that's one person, you know?

“That's not a statistic. That is a human life.”