Yesterday the New York Times ran a story about a report on pedestrian safety released by New York City's transportation planners. By any measure the report is unprecedented: The planners examined records of more than 7,000 serious crashes involving pedestrians over the last eight years, all in hopes of pinning down their common factors and underlying causes.

As you might imagine, some of the findings aren't very surprising, like the fact that a pedestrian was ten times more likely to die in a given collision than someone enjoying the protection of a car. But some of the other discoveries are pretty jolting. For instance, a whopping 80% of the crashes that maimed or killed a pedestrian involved a man behind the wheel. (That statistic may call for a separate study altogether.) Most of those male drivers, by the way, were driving their own private autos, rather than, say, a taxicab or commercial truck.

Also, pedestrians accounted for more than half of all traffic fatalities in New York City between 2005 and 2009. And over 70% of fatalities involved "vulnerable road users," a category that adds cyclists and motorcyclists to peds. We'll try to pull the same numbers for metro Washington jurisdictions.

Another stat that pops out and will surely tickle bike advocates: Pedestrian crashes that occurred on streets with bike lanes proved 40% less deadly than crashes that happened elsewhere. The study attributes that to the narrowing of the street, which typically lowers speeds and makes drivers more alert.

Some other findings:

--Driver inattention was cited in more than a third of all pedestrian crashes.

--More than a quarter of such crashes involved a driver who didn't yield.

--Crashes where the driver was speeding were twice as likely to kill pedestrians.

--Left-turn pedestrian crashes outnumbered right-turn crashes 3 to 1.

--In 31% of truck-on-ped crashes, the truck was making a right turn.

The planners behind the study recommend that the city install countdown signals at 1,500 more intersections; reengineer 60 miles of streets and 20 corners with pedestrian safety in mind; and start a program to improve visibility for cars making left turns.

Wouldn't it be nice if the planning boards and transportation departments around here undertook a study like this one?