New Pedestrian Safety Campaign for Philadelphia Launches

Pennsauken, NJ (Law Firm Newswire) May 7, 2015 – Philapelphia’s city and state Departments of Transportation have teamed up to focus on distraction caused by the use of smartphones.

On April 9, the city of Philadelphia, in tandem with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) launched a public safety campaign urging pedestrians in the city to avoid texting and crossing a street at the same time. The campaign has been designed to address the growing number of pedestrian injuries and fatalities in Philadelphia.

The scope of the problem is significant, as Ema Yamamoto, project manager for the city’s pedestrian safety and education enforcement program, explained at the campaign’s official rollout. According to Yamamoto, an average of one pedestrian every five hours is struck by a motor vehicle in Philadelphia. In 2013 alone, more than 1,800 pedestrians were hit by cars, and in 37 of those collisions, the pedestrian died.

Billboards at city bus shelters will carry the message: “It’s Road Safety, Not Rocket Science.” The campaign will also target 18- to 35-year-olds in posts on social media sites.

The campaign’s advertisements will feature illustrations depicting a pedestrian looking at a smartphone and a motorist focused on a similar screen entering the same intersection — with both persons oblivious of the other’s presence.

“Campaigns like the one that Philadelphia and PennDOT have introduced are a key means of increasing public safety by heightening public awareness and education,” said Steven Petrillo, a prominent attorney in Pennsauken, New Jersey, whose law firm specializes in personal injury law. “And since this campaign focuses on the use of smartphones, it stands to reason that the younger generation, for whom smartphones and social media are a favored means of getting information, would be a key target group.”

It’s not just Philadelphia, either. Nationally, pedestrian injuries and fatalities have become a major problem. In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians were killed and another 70,000 injured in collisions with motor vehicles in the United States, according to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those figures averaged that year into one crash-linked pedestrian death every two hours in this country, and a pedestrian injury every seven minutes.

“The odds are heavily stacked against a pedestrian who crosses the path of an oncoming motor vehicle,” Petrillo said. “And distractions like texting by the pedestrian, the motorist or both, can make such an encounter all the more likely to be deadly.”

Learn more at http://www.petrilloandgoldberg.com/ Petrillo & Goldberg Law 6951 North Park Drive Pennsauken, NJ 08109 1333 Race Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 70 South Broad Street Woodbury, NJ 08096 Phone: 856-486-4343 Fax: 856:486-7979