[YetAnotherMatt]

Like some of the other comments already mentioned, its indeed on a per distance basis. Also traffic accidents are far more deathly if you're walking basically naked from a safety perspective vs protected by a well designed mass of metal.

When a car and a human collide, it's not the driver that's likely to die.

I got my stats from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort which shows walking approx 12 times as dangerous per mile.

On a time basis walking would be less dangerous than driving I reckon. Walking also has other health benefits.

I mentioned it specifically, because walking to the store instead of driving for safety reasons would not be a smart choice. Doing some daily walking in a park likely would be a smart choice though.

[nelaboras]

That depends on many factors. Living in a crowded European city I have plenty of shops in walking distance, protected sidewalks and a traffic nightmare. It would take me longer and I'd be much more likely to get into an accident when driving to any of the shops nearby; walking is easier and safer. If you have a city designed for cars like most US cities seem to be the story is very different.

Per se walking is definitely safer, given decent walking conditions. If all you got are sidewalk-less streets and only big shops that are a decent distance away, that's not the fault of walking but of bad city design. similarly in winter, if there's snow and your city clears the street but not the sidewalk then of course the sidewalk is less safe.

[jmchuster]

FYI, here's where they get the 12x more dangerous data from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20091122180337/http://www.statis...