Pedestrian traffic fatalities

As the United States has produced more broiler chickens, more pedestrians have been killed on American roads, a correlation that spans twenty-one years and connects the poultry industry to the transportation industry with the unflinching confidence of a trend line that has never visited a chicken farm or a crosswalk. The coefficient is 0.895, which is strong enough to make you wonder whether the trucks carrying all those chickens are the ones hitting the pedestrians. They probably are not, but the mental image persists.

US broiler chicken production grew from about 32 billion pounds in 2002 to over 45 billion by 2022, making chicken the most consumed protein in America, surpassing beef around 2010. Pedestrian fatalities grew during the same period for the usual suspects: larger vehicles, faster speeds, more urban density, and smartphone distraction. Both metrics track population growth and economic expansion: more people means more chicken demand and more pedestrians on more streets. The truck traffic associated with agricultural logistics is a real contributor to road danger, but it is a small fraction of total vehicle-miles traveled. The real shared variable is simply the growing, urbanizing American economy.

Twenty-one years of chicken production and pedestrian deaths rising together is a distinctly American correlation: a nation that produces more protein and more road danger in equal measure, powered by the same demographic growth and the same transportation infrastructure. The chickens are processed, the pedestrians are imperiled, and the economy that produces both has not figured out how to make either safer.