Pedestrian traffic fatalities

As fewer Americans have visited public libraries, more of them have been struck by cars while walking, a correlation that is either a devastating commentary on the relationship between literacy and road safety or a reminder that both metrics track the same digital transformation from different angles. The coefficient is -0.815 across twenty-one years, during which the library emptied and the crosswalk got more dangerous, and the chart connected them like a eulogy for analog public life.

Public library visits declined from about 1.5 billion in 2002 to about 1 billion by 2022, as digital media and the internet replaced many of the library's traditional functions. Pedestrian fatalities grew from about 4,800 to over 7,500 during the same period. Both trends are products of the smartphone revolution: the phone replaced the library trip and simultaneously created the distraction that endangers pedestrians. Fewer people visit libraries because information is in their pockets; more pedestrians die because distraction is in their pockets. The smartphone is the shared disruptor, eliminating one institution and creating one crisis with the same rectangular device.

Twenty-one years of library visits declining and pedestrian deaths rising is a correlation with a real shared mechanism: the smartphone. It made the library trip unnecessary and the crosswalk dangerous, and both trends will continue as long as the phone remains the primary interface between Americans and everything else. The card catalog is digital, the distraction is constant, and the librarian—who would have told you to look both ways—has been laid off.