Eleven bright-yellow, life-size sculptures of a figure named Mr. Walker are showing up at crosswalks around Kansas City, part of a new pedestrian-safety push called SafeAcross KC. The initiative pairs the attention-grabbing statues with educational messaging aimed at drivers who blow through crosswalks without yielding, a problem the city says has turned deadly far too often in recent years.
Kansas City is joining the broader SafeAcross program, which aims to promote pedestrian-friendly communities by training drivers to be more aware of crosswalks, according to the City of Kansas City. The Mr. Walker signs are intended to reinforce existing crosswalk signage, per the city's news release, and the sculptures themselves will be placed at 11 different crosswalks around town, as first reported by the Kansas City Star.
The city has recorded an average of 51 fatal or serious-injury pedestrian-involved crashes per year since 2021, according to a news release from the City of Kansas City. That grim tally is the backdrop against which officials say they hope to initiate a cultural change in the community to increase pedestrian safety.
Where The Statues Are Popping Up
Per the Star's reporting, Mr. Walker sculptures are heading to Troost Avenue and E. 31st Street, Brooklyn and Lexington avenues, W. 17th Street and Summit Street, Broadway Boulevard and Westport Road, and E. 51st Street and Brookside Boulevard.
Alongside the statues, Kansas City will release educational messages about pedestrian and driver safety as part of the rollout. SafeAcross KC will also mark its progress with additional signage placed throughout the community, the city says.
Tracking Whether Drivers Actually Stop
The program isn't just about putting up statues and hoping for the best. SafeAcross KC will conduct quarterly crosswalk compliance studies that measure the average number of drivers who yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, according to SafeAcross. The city plans to use that study data to evaluate progress and the effectiveness of its safety improvements going forward.
Kansas City isn't the first city in the state to try this exact approach. Springfield, Missouri, uses its own life-size, neon-yellow Mr. Walker statue to reinforce crosswalk safety and awareness, according to the National League of Cities. Springfield had reported 74 pedestrian crashes in 2016, a 25% jump from 2014 that included 10 fatal pedestrian crashes over that span, and a local study found that driver failure to yield contributed to more than half of all pedestrian crashes there.
Since launching its own SGF Yields program in 2017, Springfield has more than doubled its driver compliance rate at crosswalks, climbing from 25% to over 50%, per the same National League of Cities report. The program reportedly halted the upward trend in pedestrian crashes the city had been seeing before it started.
Part Of A Larger Vision Zero Push
SafeAcross KC fits into Kansas City's broader Vision Zero initiative, which the City Council passed in May 2020 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030, according to The Beacon. The city's High Injury Network maps out where the most fatal, serious-injury and minor-injury crashes are occurring, using data from 2019 through 2023, according to the City of Kansas City.
Kansas City has leaned on street design before to slow drivers down. The city received an Asphalt Art Initiative grant of up to $25,000 from Bloomberg Philanthropies for installations meant to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, and an asphalt-art project at Westport Road and Wyandotte Street reportedly cut average travel speed through that intersection by 45%, per The Beacon's reporting. That project used curb extensions, four-way stop signs, bollards, boulders, planters and street murals to force cars to stop and shorten the distance pedestrians have to cross.
Missouri law already requires drivers to yield the right of way to pedestrians crossing within a crosswalk when traffic signals are absent or not working, slowing or stopping if necessary, according to the Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Whether a neon-yellow statue named Mr. Walker can get more Kansas City drivers to actually follow that rule is exactly what the city's quarterly compliance studies are designed to find out.
