When Henry Hale Bliss, a pedestrian described on the plaque that stands in his memory as “a New York real estate man,” was struck by a passing taxicab in Manhattan on the evening of September 13, 1899, the New York Times reported that he “was so seriously injured that he could not live.” This prediction proved prescient. Bliss succumbed to his injuries the following day, becoming the first American in history known to have been fatally struck by an automobile. Today, the 69-year-old is recognized as the first casualty in an ongoing conflict that has reshaped the United States’ urban centers: the battle between pedestrians and drivers.
Bliss wasn’t the first pedestrian victim of an automobile accident. That title goes to Bridget Driscoll, an Irish woman who was struck on the grounds of London’s Crystal Palace in August 1896. Neither was Bliss the last traffic fatality. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, the number of pedestrians killed by drivers reached a four-decade high of more than 7,500 in 2022 and remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels in 2023.
But that’s a world removed from the one Bliss once knew. Though reliable data about the number of walkers killed annually by vehicles prior to the 1910s is tough to come by, pedestrian fatalities were hardly uncommon in late 19th-century New York City. In that era, trams, horse-drawn carriages and bicycles shared the pavement with pedestrians. Streets were still regarded the way they had been for centuries, as public spaces in which people and animals could move about freely in any direction they chose.
When travelers on foot, especially elderly people and young children, found themselves in the path of vehicles, the results were often tragic. Then, in the second decade of the 20th century, the widespread adoption of the automobile made urban streets even more hazardous, says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia who examined humans’ love-hate relationship with cars in his 2008 book, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.
As the popularity of cars exploded, officials charged with keeping order in cities stood firm in their view that pedestrian safety was the responsibility of the motorist, much like it was with carriage drivers.
“Every time, the judge would say, ‘A pedestrian has no obligation to watch out for motor vehicles; it’s the motor vehicle operator’s responsibility to watch out for them,’” Norton explains. “This is Anglo-American common law tradition that says the street is a public space. Everybody’s entitled to use it, provided they don’t endanger others or unduly inconvenience others. [That] put the burden of responsibility on the driver, because the pedestrian is not endangering anyone else, but the driver is.”