The reason this isn't solved is because traffic deaths are considered to be a "cost of doing business". Most pedestrian traffic in the US is in cities and due to the way funding formulas and political representation works in the US, suburban and rural areas have more political power than urban areas which care more about traffic throughput than pedestrian safety, so the issue never gets fixed. The only places in the US making headway have large urbanized areas and even they are struggling.
Rural areas don’t have much political power either. A lot of rural America is actually unincorporated which means they don’t have a municipal level government, and instead are ruled by the county[^†].
In my experience the outsized political power is across gegraphic areas and instead is divided between classes, with the rich having almost all political power. A rich neighborhood in San Francisco hold much more political power than an improvised suburb in Fresno.
Instead the reason I believe for pedestrian traffic being considered the "cost of doing business" among the political classes, is the good old hatred of the poor. Pedastrian casualties are extremely rare among the rich, as the rich usually drive almost everywhere, and if they walk, they do so in an area which they have lobbied to make safe for pedestrians. The rich don’t care if the poor die.
†: As an immigrant, this feels like a major democratic oversight, one of many USA should fix if it wants to consider it self a democracy by 21st century standards.
Other states may be different, but at least in California there’s a pretty straightforward path to incorporation if a community desires it. The large number of unincorporated areas are because the residents don’t think the tradeoffs are worth it.
Counties are also generally all too happy to delegate decision making to communities which will take it on even if they don’t incorporate.
It still feels like a democratic oversight. The most favorable interpretation is a failure of policy.
It is simply not acceptable to leave any part of your population without municipality level representation. Delegating this to a community council is not democratic and is extremely ripe for misuse. If a community wishes to remain unincorporated you have to look at why that is, and offer accommodations or change the incorporation strategy accordingly.
For example both Skyway and White Center (unincorporated King County, WA) voters have refuse to be incorporated with Renton and Burien respectively, but it was the Seattle city council (not voters) that rejected incorporating White Center, and voters have never been asked if they want their own independence. At the same time Vashon hasn’t even been asked.
If America was serious about democracy they would establish a policy in which every populated area outside of reservations will have local level representation in like 30 years (ideally they should have started that policy 30 years ago). And if there is no agreement on how a single community (say White Center) hasn’t incorporated by that time, have a plurality wins—or better yet, ranked choice—vote on e.g. 3 options, Seattle, Burien, or independent.
Skyway and White Center aren’t rural. They want to be unincorporated to pay less taxes and follow less rules. I agree that suburban unincorporated shouldn’t be allowed. I would add that small, below 50-100k, suburban cities shouldn’t be allowed. But that isn’t for smaller subdivisions but larger ones,
But that has nothing to do with rural areas. My brother lives in Iowa near medium town. Everything else is small towns, less than 1000. Should those incorporate and spend money on city services? What about the farmers who are spread out? What municipality do they belong to? The county is the best option.
Let me understand this. Are you suggesting adding yet another inefficient layer of government in sparsely populated areas?
BTW, in at least some states there are intermediate subdivisions of government, e.g. townships and districts, which take care of the roads even in rural areas.
Yes. This is what most—all?—other democracies do. More realistically though, municipality level governments include surrounding rural areas. In areas with small towns and large areas of rural farmlands, the farmers and town residents have equal representation, but the farmers obviously have a bigger political influence (hopefully the municipality governments have enough representatives though that the townfolks have at least a couple of representatives).
In reality unincorporated America also includes heavily urbanized areas (more often than not poorer than the surrounding areas). Here in Seattle this includes Skyway and White Center. But even if aside from those it is pretty unacceptable that all local planning for the community of e.g. Fairwood, or even Hobart don’t have any say in their municipality level organization, instead relying on the same county council as Seattle for their local affairs (a council with only 9 representatives for a total of 2.2 million constituents).
