Pedestrian traffic fatalities

US pedestrian traffic fatalities and US data center electricity consumption have, between 2015 and 2022, risen together at a correlation of 0.944. The pairing suggests that somewhere between the server farm and the crosswalk, there is a causal chain. There is not. There is only the same decade.

US pedestrian fatalities rose from around 5,500 in 2015 to over 7,500 by 2022, driven by the SUV-dominant vehicle fleet with taller hoods that hit pedestrians at torso height, plus reduced traffic enforcement after 2020. US data center electricity consumption climbed from 70 TWh to over 140 TWh in the same window, driven by cloud hyperscalers, streaming infrastructure, and the eventual AI workload surge. Both trends are products of the same decade of expanding infrastructure — one in vehicle fleets, one in server capacity — with no causal link between the two.

Eight years of two lines rising together can describe two unrelated forms of American expansion on the same timeline. The server and the sidewalk are on different plans. Both, in their ways, keep growing.