ATLANTA — Propel ATL, a nonprofit focused on metro Atlanta traffic safety, says traffic crashes killed more people in the core five metro counties than homicides.
In their new report, “The Human Cost of Mobility: 2024,” Propel ATL said that traffic deaths in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties surpassed homicides, even though “homicides are often heavily covered by news outlets while traffic fatalities are often treated as background noise.”
The report from Propel ATL said that in 2024, there were about 410 homicides, but 425 deadly traffic crashes in the five counties analyzed.
In particular, Propel ATL said DeKalb County leads the others for traffic fatalities, while Fulton County had the most serious injuries.
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The organization also said that while the report’s scope was focused on many car-dependent areas without transit services, 59% of pedestrian deaths happened within walking distance of a bus stop.
It’s a pattern the organization said was consistent over the past five years in the survey area.
Traffic deaths also impact neighborhoods with African American populations more than other demographics, the report said.
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More than 61% of the traffic deaths in the five-county metro Atlanta core were “in predominantly Black neighborhoods, which represent 43% of all tracts,” the study found.
Rebecca Serna, Propel ATL Executive Director said the United States overall has “a pedestrian safety crisis and Atlanta is a microcosm of uniquely American factors that produce traffic death rates that are a global anomaly.”
Still, data from Propel ATL showed traffic fatalities were down almost 10% from 2023, when 470 people died in the core counties.
However, 2024 had a reported 157,000 crashes in the five counties studied.
Propel ATL said in 2024:
- 1,961 crashes involved people walking, biking or rolling
- 138 crashes resulted in pedestrian or cyclist deaths, a 3.8% increase from 2023
- 40 pedestrians were killed by drivers in DeKalb County
- Cobb County fatal crashes killed more pedestrians than other drivers or passengers
- There were 25 pedestrian deaths in the City of Atlanta
- 59 people died in Atlanta traffic crashes
- 20 most dangerous roadways account for 11% of fatal crashes but are only 1.2% of all roadways in the five-county area
“It’s inadequate to call traffic injuries and deaths ‘accidents,’” Serna said. “They are the result of systems that are now well understood; from decisions to build dangerous, high-speed roadways that are hostile to people outside of cars, to refusing to make high-transit and dense areas walkable, to building inequitably, with the region’s most dangerous corridors traversing the poorest census tracts.”
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