Satellite launches per year worldwide

As more satellites have been launched into orbit, more pedestrians have been killed on American roads, a correlation that suggests the same species building a global telecommunications network in low Earth orbit cannot figure out how to make a crosswalk safe. The coefficient is 0.865 across eighteen years, during which the sky got busier and the streets got deadlier, and the chart connecting them had the cosmic audacity to suggest a relationship between orbital mechanics and pavement.

Satellite launches grew from about 60 per year in 2005 to over 2,500 by 2022, driven primarily by SpaceX's Starlink constellation. Pedestrian fatalities grew from about 4,700 to over 7,500. Both trends are products of the same technological and economic expansion: the investment climate that funds satellite constellations also funds the tech economy that produces larger vehicles, delivery traffic, and smartphone distraction—all direct contributors to pedestrian danger. The satellites beam the data, the data fills the phones, the phones distract the drivers, and the pedestrians absorb the consequence. The chain is indirect but real.

Eighteen years of satellites and pedestrian deaths growing together is a correlation that almost contains a causal chain, if you squint: the satellites deliver the internet, the internet fills the smartphones, and the smartphones distract the drivers who hit the pedestrians. Almost. The orbit fills up, the crosswalk clears out, and the distance between progress and safety remains measured in human lives.