Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that the Ferguson Effect contributed to pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing between 2014 and 2016 and the Floyd Effect doing the same in 2020-2022.
As a frequent pedestrian, I’m against pedestrians being run over by motorists. It’s quite possible that there are long-term high-tech ways to prevent pedestrians beings flattened. But, as this graph shows, we had a pretty decent way — cops pulling over bad drivers — before the New Jim Crow Era kicked into overdrive at Ferguson in later 2014 and went nuts in May 2020 with George Floyd’s death.
If the Great and the Good were serious about pedestrians not being run over, they’d admit they screwed up royally during the post-George Floyd “racial reckoning.” But that’s about the last thing you can expect them to do.
