This might be the reason behind the old stereotype that nobody walks in L.A.

We're the second best place in America to get killed by a car while walking. Really. The revelation comes via the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which recently released big-city vehicle crash statistics for 2012.

Los Angeles did grimly well, coming in second place for the number of pedestrians killed by vehicles that year (99). But we were beat out by …
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 … New York, which saw 127 pedestrians killed.

Nationwide, pedestrian deaths comprised 14 percent of all traffic fatalities. In L.A., pedestrian deaths accounted for a whopping 41 percent of all killed in car crashes. For New York, it was 47 percent, according to the NHTSA stats.

Los Angeles' per-100,000 pedestrian fatality rate wasn't at all the highest, at 2.57 percent. But it beat out New York's 1.52 percent.

Likewise, according to the NHTSA report:

Pedestrian fatalities were highest in California (612), followed by Texas (478) and Florida (476).

More than 1 in 5 traffic fatalities (21.4 percent) involved pedestrians in the Golden State in 2012, according to NHTSA. 

Hit-and-run crashes appear to be a big part of L.A.'s own pedestrian fatality problem. After L.A. Weekly uncovered our city's shocking “Hit-and-Run Epidemic” in 2012, new state legislation was passed to increase the statute of limitations on hit-and-run cases.

But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called our coverage “misleading.”

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