Traffic violence kills more people than homicide in LA
For the last few years, deaths to traffic violence in LA have been greater than deaths what most people think of as "regular violence" - people killing each other. The LAist has coverage of this year's data here.
Traffic collisions in the city of Los Angeles killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to Los Angeles Police Department data. It's also 60 more people than died by homicide last year.
The other sad thing is that 2025 was our "Vision Zero" year - the year the city had planned to hit zero traffic collision deaths. There's been plenty of writing online already about how profoundly the city failed to hit that goal - or even, really, to honestly pursue it. Even in 2026 we're watching the city furiously try to legal-squirm their way out of resurfacing roads!!!! so they can avoid the responsibility of adding bike lanes and traffic safety measures for pedestrians.
When you talk about the relative risks of driving vs public transit, people immediately start equivocating about hypothetical per-capita murder rates on each transit mode, or start talking about how they feel like they have less agency to avoid murderers (??) on the train, and shit like that. I think we should try looking at it from another perspective: if you are in a train, then you become one potential murderer whom I now get a bit of reprieve from! If you're in a train, it is harder for you to turn me into marinara sauce. I understand that not everyone might care about that, but I do support heavy regulation of your ability to carelessly kill or maim me!
I think most of the things we'd need to do to truly hit a streak of zero deaths would be not only city scale but state and federal-level as well. I sure would like to see the city try, though! They could take a bigger bite out of that number than anyone else!