Dangerous by Design: A New National Report Ranks Bakersfield Among America’s Most Deadly Cities for People on Foot

Bakersfield has been named one of the most dangerous cities in America to walk. Again.

Smart Growth America’s 2026 “Dangerous by Design” report, one of the most comprehensive national analyses of pedestrian safety, has once again placed Bakersfield among the most dangerous cities in the United States for people walking.

The report ranks metropolitan areas across the country using a Pedestrian Danger Index, a metric that weighs pedestrian fatalities against factors including population, demographics, and exposure. The Bakersfield-Delano area ranked third worst among the deadliest metro areas for people walking, with five pedestrian fatalities annually per 100,000 people, and 382 pedestrian fatalities from 2015 to 2024. Albuquerque ranked No. 2 and Memphis ranked No. 1.

Bakersfield’s ranking is not an outlier or a statistical anomaly. It is the continuation of a years-long pattern that has cost real people their lives on streets that were built for cars and not for the human beings who have to cross them.

“We have been saying this for years: Bakersfield is a city where the infrastructure makes walking dangerous by design, not by accident,” said Matt Clark, managing partner and attorney at the Law Office of Chain | Cohn | Clark. “When a national study confirms what our people have been living and dying through, it is not vindication. It is a call to action that this community can no longer afford to ignore.”

What the 2026 Dangerous by Design Report Found

Smart Growth America has published its Dangerous by Design report since 2011, tracking pedestrian fatalities and near-fatalities across American cities and states. The 2026 edition analyzed data from recent years and found that the United States continues to fail people who walk, with pedestrian deaths rising even as overall traffic safety technology has improved.

Nationally, the report found that pedestrian fatalities have increased dramatically over the past decade, with more than 7,500 people killed while walking in a single recent year, a number that represents the highest pedestrian death toll recorded in four decades. The report places significant responsibility for these deaths not on individual behavior but on road design, specifically the proliferation of wide, high-speed arterial roads that prioritize vehicle throughput over human safety.

The Pedestrian Danger Index used by Smart Growth America accounts for the number of pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents, weighted by the percentage of people who walk to work as a measure of exposure. Cities where few people walk but many people die while doing so score especially high, and that profile fits Bakersfield with uncomfortable precision.

Bakersfield has appeared in this report’s most dangerous rankings across multiple editions. The 2026 report continues that pattern, placing the Bakersfield metropolitan area among the most dangerous in the nation for pedestrians. California as a whole ranks among the most dangerous states, a finding that stands in sharp contrast to the state’s reputation for progressive transportation policy.

Why Bakersfield Keeps Appearing on This List

Bakersfield was built during an era of automobile-centric planning, and its road network reflects that history in ways that are now proving fatal.

The city’s major arterial corridors, wide, fast, and often lacking adequate pedestrian infrastructure, run through neighborhoods where significant numbers of residents do not own cars or cannot drive. Chester Avenue, White Lane, Ming Avenue, Stockdale Highway, and Union Avenue are among the roads where pedestrian crashes have been documented repeatedly. These are not remote highways. They are the streets that connect people to grocery stores, bus stops, schools, and medical appointments.

The Law Office of Chain | Cohn | Clark has written about Bakersfield’s pedestrian danger problem before, and the pattern that emerges from that history is consistent: crashes tend to happen on high-speed arterial roads, often at night, often involving pedestrians who had no safe alternative route and no adequately marked or protected crossing point.

“The infrastructure fails them before the driver and vehicle ever does,” Clark said.

The 2025-26 Kern County Grand Jury report on traffic calming, released earlier this year, added another dimension to this picture. That report found that Bakersfield’s Public Works Traffic Engineering Division has operated with essentially the same number of engineers for over 26 years despite the city’s population growing by more than 71 percent. A department stretched that thin cannot proactively identify dangerous pedestrian corridors, push for infrastructure improvements, or respond quickly when residents raise safety concerns.

“This is not random,” Clark said. “It is a predictable consequence of building a city around cars and then asking pedestrians to navigate it without adequate protection.”

Who Is Most at Risk

The Dangerous by Design report is careful to document not just where pedestrian deaths occur but who is dying. The findings are a direct challenge to anyone who believes pedestrian safety is a universal problem distributed evenly across a community.

• Nationally, the report found that Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous pedestrians die at significantly higher rates.
• Older adults, particularly those over 65, are killed at disproportionately high rates relative to their share of the walking population.
• People in low-income communities face greater danger because they are more likely to depend on walking as a primary mode of transportation, more likely to live near high-speed arterial roads, and less likely to have access to neighborhoods with protected crossings, wide sidewalks, and adequate lighting.

In Bakersfield, those national patterns have a local face. The corridors where pedestrian crashes cluster are not in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. They run through communities where car ownership is lower, transit dependence is higher, and the built environment offers the least protection to the people who need it most.

What Needs to Change

Smart Growth America’s report does not simply document the problem. It offers a framework for solutions, and the recommendations are worth taking seriously in Bakersfield.

• The report calls for a fundamental shift in how roads are designed, away from wide, high-speed arterials optimized for vehicle throughput and toward complete streets that accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users alongside cars.
• Specific interventions that have proven effective in other cities include reduced speed limits on urban arterials, high-visibility crosswalk markings, pedestrian refuge islands on wide roads, leading pedestrian intervals that give walkers a head start before vehicles get a green light, better street lighting, and road diets that narrow travel lanes to naturally slow vehicle speeds.

Bakersfield has begun installing speed humps in some residential corridors, a step the Grand Jury report acknowledged as meaningful. But speed humps on residential streets do not address the arterial corridors where pedestrian fatalities are concentrated. The infrastructure investments that would make the greatest difference require sustained funding, political will, and a Public Works department with the staffing capacity to plan and execute them.

Recently, the Bakersfield City Council approved a $14 million-plus contract to begin construction in the H Street Corridor improvement project that aims to improve bicyclist and pedestrian safety, implement traffic calming elements, enhance aesthetics and more, according to city officials.

Residents who want to push for safer crossings, better lighting, or infrastructure improvements on specific corridors have mechanisms available to them, including the Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program petition process and direct engagement with City Council representatives. Community advocacy has driven pedestrian safety improvements in cities across the country. There is no reason it cannot work in Bakersfield.

What the Law Says When a Pedestrian Is Struck

California law provides strong protections for pedestrians who are injured by vehicles. Drivers are required to yield to pedestrians in marked and unmarked crosswalks, to exercise reasonable care to avoid striking anyone on foot, and to use their horn or take evasive action when necessary to prevent a collision. Violating those duties and injuring someone creates legal liability.

But pedestrian injury cases are frequently more complex than a simple driver-versus-pedestrian analysis. When a crash occurs on a poorly designed road, with an unmarked crossing, inadequate lighting, missing or faded crosswalk paint, absent pedestrian signals, or a speed limit that does not reflect actual driving conditions, the government entity responsible for maintaining that infrastructure may also bear responsibility.

Government liability claims in California are subject to strict procedural requirements, including a six-month deadline to file a government tort claim before any lawsuit can be filed. That deadline begins running from the date of the injury, not from the date a family retains an attorney or discovers that a road defect contributed to the crash. Missing that deadline can permanently extinguish an otherwise valid claim, which is why contacting an attorney quickly after a pedestrian crash is not just advisable but critical.

In hit-and-run cases, which are tragically common in pedestrian crashes, uninsured motorist coverage may provide a path to compensation even when the driver cannot be identified. Understanding what coverage applies, and how to pursue it, requires legal guidance.

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If you or someone you know is injured in an accident at the fault of someone else, or injured on the job no matter whose fault it is, contact the attorneys at Chain | Cohn | Clark by calling (661) 323-4000, or fill out a free consultation form, text, or chat with us at chainlaw.com.