COMMENTARY:
For eight consecutive years through 2024, New Mexico had the nation’s highest per-capita pedestrian fatality rate. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, the state recorded 2.07 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents during the first half of 2024. This was more than double the national rate of 0.97. This persistent crisis reflects several factors, including substance impairment among road users, excessive vehicle speeds, inadequate nighttime lighting, and arterial roads with few safe crossing opportunities. While infrastructure improvements and effective enforcement remain essential, one potentially valuable intervention has received far less attention: what drivers are required to know, and whether that knowledge is ever updated.
An everyday driveway encounter illustrates the gap. A driver may reverse while watching for approaching vehicles but fail to check the sidewalk for a child on a bicycle, an older adult walking, or a person using a wheelchair. Using federal crash data collected primarily between 2002 and 2007, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that backover crashes resulted in approximately 292 deaths and 18,000 injuries annually. Children younger than five and adults aged 70 and older were disproportionately represented among those killed. These incidents are difficult to track because many occur on private property, including driveways and parking lots, and may not be fully captured in standard crash databases. Although backovers represent only one part of the broader pedestrian-safety problem, they show how routine driving situations can expose potentially dangerous gaps in driver awareness.
The need for updated driver education has become increasingly important as the transportation environment has evolved. Communities have added bicycle lanes, raised crossings, pedestrian-refuge islands, traffic-calming features, and other designs that may be unfamiliar to long-licensed motorists. E-bikes and electric scooters have also introduced new interactions among road users. Traffic laws and recommended safety practices have changed accordingly, yet license renewal often remains primarily an administrative transaction.
New Mexico can look to New York for a partial model. Legislation signed in 2022 requires New York’s pre-licensing course to include instruction on pedestrian and bicyclist safety. It also requires relevant safety information to be included in the state driver’s manual. However, the requirement emphasizes initial licensing, leaving unresolved how drivers will receive safety updates as streets, laws, and transportation technologies change.
The New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division and state lawmakers should consider a brief road-safety module during license renewal. It could refresh drivers’ knowledge of marked and unmarked crossings, driveways, bicycle lanes, nighttime visibility, and interactions with e-bike and scooter users. Rather than requiring another road test, the state could offer a short online lesson followed by scenario-based questions. Every driver eventually becomes a pedestrian, so this knowledge benefits everyone.
Admittedly, some motorists may consider an additional renewal requirement inconvenient. That concern should be acknowledged, but it should not end the discussion. Public policy sometimes requires modest inconvenience to address practices that endanger others. We accept periodic training in workplaces when procedures, technologies, and responsibilities change. The responsibility of operating a vehicle on public streets should warrant the same commitment to keeping safety knowledge current.
Education cannot replace safer crossings, lower speeds, effective enforcement, accessible infrastructure, or forgiving street design. It should be one component of a broader safety strategy. License renewal gives the state recurring contact with nearly every motorist, making it an underused opportunity for education. Renewal should refresh more than a license card; it should refresh the knowledge and responsibility that safe driving demands.
Matilda Bekoe is a PhD candidate at NMSU in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies.
Matilda Bekoe's opinions are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.