Pedestrian traffic fatalities

It is a deeply modern fact that as Americans have become increasingly committed to insuring their pets against illness, they have simultaneously become increasingly likely to be hit by cars while walking. The implication—that the financial wellbeing of one's labradoodle somehow correlates with one's own physical peril—is the kind of observation that makes you want to sit down, possibly in the middle of a crosswalk. Twenty-one years of data confirm what no reasonable person would ever have suspected.

The pet insurance industry in the US has grown from a niche curiosity to a 4-billion-dollar market, expanding as millennials and Gen Z began treating their animals less like property and more like dependents with dental plans. This growth tracks closely with rising disposable income in urban areas, where both pet ownership rates and pedestrian density are highest. Pedestrian fatalities, meanwhile, have risen for the same urban-economic reasons: more people walking in cities where vehicles have grown larger and faster, and where smartphone distraction has become the ambient condition of street life. Both metrics are essentially measuring the same thing—the intensification of urban American life—from two very different angles, one involving actuarial tables and the other involving emergency rooms.

We insure our pets and endanger ourselves with roughly equal enthusiasm, which is either a statement about misplaced priorities or simply what happens when a society urbanizes faster than its infrastructure can adapt. The dogs are covered. The pedestrians, evidently, are not.