Urban Reads: Want Fewer Traffic Deaths? Start by Reducing How Much We Drive

Interstate 94 and 27th Street bridge construction in May 2026. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff. Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful. The end of more crash deaths is less cars: New research shows that on a per capita basis, more driving means more crashes. But safety discussions from highway departments or the Department of Transportation often leave out this information. The authors also note that officials would rather focus on outlier driving behaviors such as drunk driving than say that more cars and driving as a requirement instead of an option will lead to more collisions and deaths. (Kea Wilson | Streetsblog USA) Chicago transit s new found development powers: Illinois recent reorganizat