One traffic fatality a day in Chicago

From the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation:

Every day in Chicagoland there are more than 800 traffic crashes. Of those, about 150 drivers will flee the scene. Chicagoland has an average of more than one traffic fatality every day. Another 24 are seriously injured every day. Crashes cost the Chicago area resident $1,000 each year.

All this crashing is mostly cars crashing into other cars. But they are crashing among people biking and walking. And those are the people most vulnerable to serious injury and death.

Hit-and-run crashes

Pedestrians are disproportionately impacted by hit-and-run crashes. In Northeastern Illinois, an alarming 30 percent of all pedestrian crashes are hit-and-run. That means that in four crashes each day in our region, a driver leaves the scene after hitting a person walking. Pedestrians are left many times in the street to be found by a passerby. Cyclists fare a little better. Just under 20 percent of our region’s bicycle crashes are hit-and-run, a level similar to car-on-car hit-and-run crashes.