Memphis corridor illustrates the role of stroad design in US pedestrian deaths

Tennessee DOT declines redesign, plans only lighting and repainting

Bessan-Gligo stepped into the middle of Union Avenue. A GMC Yukon, a large SUV, hit and killed her. The occupants of the car, three teenage boys, walked away from the crash uninjured, a police report noted; the vehicle was barely damaged by the collision with her body.

Bessan-Gligo was an attentive student at Central High School, her history teacher said, though she was most passionate about the school’s band. Central’s marching band is among the best in the nation, and Bessan-Gligo played the cymbals. After band practice, she would walk to a shift at a sandwich shop beside Union Avenue, then cross the busy street to get home. She did not yet have her driver’s license and walked the route almost every day, a friend said.

She is one of 15 people killed by a car along Union Avenue since 2020, according to state and federal data. On the 1.5-mile section she regularly crossed, more than 50 pedestrians have been involved in traffic accidents since 2020, including 10 fatalities.

Her death came during a period in which U.S. pedestrian deaths climbed 72% from 2009 to 2024, federal data show. Over the same period, pedestrian deaths fell in most other developed nations, according to United Nations data, leaving the United States an outlier on road safety. The Sunbelt is now the most dangerous region of the country for pedestrians.

Engineers and urbanists point to a road-design category to explain the pattern. Charles Marohn, the engineer widely credited with coining the term “stroad” — a portmanteau of “street” and “road” — said a street serves as a destination for businesses and homes while a road transports people at high speeds between destinations. A stroad attempts to do both at once.

In Memphis, Union Avenue is a center of commercial activity, lined with grocery stores, fast-food restaurants and gas stations. It is also a six-lane highway that carries some 30,000 cars a day. Sidewalks on Union Avenue are narrow, and many intersections sit about a half-mile apart. At a 40 mph speed limit, a half-mile takes a driver about 45 seconds; for a pedestrian after a long shift, the same distance can stretch much longer.

The businesses that line stroads like Union Avenue often employ shift workers who cannot afford a car, said Heidi Simon, a director of urban-planning at the nonprofit Smart Growth America. But stroads are not designed with walkers in mind. Bessan-Gligo frequently crossed in the middle of the road, her friend said, because she had done it so often that it no longer felt dangerous.

That kind of midblock crossing is the deadliest. Pedestrians are most likely to be killed by cars when they cross roads outside of crosswalks at night, data show. Midblock crossings often surprise drivers, said Rebecca Sanders, national safety practice research lead at the transportation consulting firm Fehr & Peers. The design of a stroad — wide, straight, multiple lanes — lets drivers guide their cars down it without paying attention to their periphery, she said, and drivers may find themselves going well above the legal limit without realizing it. Stroads are also often poorly lit at night, Sanders added. “You’d need a lot of light to light the width of a roadway that is six lanes across,” she said.

Yet the U.S. keeps building stroads, said Nicholas Ferenchak, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety. “When you plop 200 houses down 15 miles from the place where people have to work, you have to build big roads where they can drive fast,” Ferenchak said. Stroads became a staple of American road design in the postwar era, he said, when urban planners assumed most people had cars and metropolitan areas sprawled. Local and state governments built wide, multilane roads so drivers could travel from suburban homes to economic centers. The trend continues today, particularly in the Sunbelt.

The Memphis metro area ranks as the deadliest in the U.S. for walkers per capita, according to a Smart Growth America analysis of data through 2024. In Memphis, stroads — roads generally more than 60 feet wide — account for only a small share of the city’s roads, but 78% of pedestrian fatalities occur on roads of such widths, a Journal analysis found. State data show at least 402 pedestrians have been killed by cars in Shelby County, which includes Memphis, since 2020.

The risks extend beyond road geometry. Many low-income Americans now work shifts that end late at night, when drivers struggle to see, said Robert Schneider, co-chair of the department of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Americans have also gravitated toward larger vehicles in recent years, which strike pedestrians with greater force. Ironically, larger, heavier vehicles are often safer for the occupants of cars, Schneider said. At the same time pedestrian deaths have swelled, the number of Americans dying in car accidents has declined.

A pedestrian hit head-on by a car going 32 mph — slightly below the speed limit on Union Avenue — has about a 25% chance of death, according to AAA data. If that car’s speed increases to 42 mph, AAA says, the pedestrian is twice as likely to die. Roads like Union Avenue — urban roads with speed limits of 35 mph or above — are now three times as deadly as other urban roads with lower speed limits, according to a 2022 Tennessee Department of Transportation report analyzing pedestrian fatalities in the state. A recent Smart Growth America study found that 57% of all roadway fatalities in 2024 occurred on state-owned roads.

Drivers often speed on Union Avenue, said Kelsey Huse, an advocate for road safety in Memphis. “To walk on Union Avenue feels like you’re about to be killed,” she said. “You have to navigate people turning in and out of businesses. If you have to cross the street, good luck finding a place to do that because the crosswalks are so far apart.”

Other cities have begun responding with redesigns. In recent years, Milwaukee modified dangerous roads by narrowing roadways, adding more crossing points and raising sidewalks, said Kevin Muhs, the city’s engineer. Those changes compel drivers to follow speed limits and pay attention to pedestrians, he said. Pedestrian deaths in Milwaukee fell 19% between 2024 and 2025, said Jessica Wineberg, coordinator of Milwaukee’s Vision Zero program. “Wherever we see a redesign, we see reduction or total elimination of fatalities,” Wineberg said.

Union Avenue will not be redesigned any time soon. After Bessan-Gligo’s death, Tennessee officials began considering changes, said Steve Allen, the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s director of local programs and community investments. The state of Tennessee owns Union Avenue. The state cannot add more crosswalks, reduce the number of lanes, or lower the speed limit on Union Avenue, he said, because those changes would take time and money. Instead, officials plan to encourage pedestrians to use existing sidewalks through measures such as improved lighting and repainting of the crosswalk nearest Bessan-Gligo’s job.

Allen placed the responsibility for pedestrian safety on walkers themselves. “Pedestrians think you have the right of way all the time,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter if you’re not paying attention. You assume that responsibility when you’re walking out on that kind of roadway.”

Tennessee’s plan probably will not make Union Avenue safer, Smart Growth America’s Simon said. The crosswalks on Union Avenue are still a half-mile apart, she said, and if crosswalks are too far away, pedestrians will not use them.