Angie Schmitt’s Right of Way looks at the ways in which pedestrian deaths are not really accidents, but the result of ignoring pedestrian safety when we design our cities, roads and vehicles. Pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. increased a shocking 80% between 2009 – 2023! Jeff Speck, whose book Walkable City we’ve previously noted, wrote of Schmitt’s book, “Other countries have cars, other countries drive a lot, but no advanced nation succeeds quite like ours in murdering its citizens with automobiles. The reason behind this fact is deep yet simple: our urban streets are engineered to kill. Nobody explains this better than Angie Schmitt.” While Schmitt’s book focuses on the U.S., Canadian road planning and the kinds of vehicles we drive are not so different, although Canadian pedestrian fatality rates have not seen the huge increases of the U.S. In an interview with StreetsblogUSA, Schmitt talks about her work on the book, and cites Neil Arason’s book No Accident, which looks at safety through a Canadian lens. In a recording made during the pandemic lockdown, Schmitt discusses her research with students from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education.