Traffic deaths are on the rise. Why is the LAPD pulling over fewer drivers?

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Set us as preferred Marvin Reid can’t say how many pedestrians he’s seen get hit while trying to brave the North Hollywood intersection of Magnolia Boulevard and Tujunga Avenue.He gave up keeping count long ago.One afternoon last spring, he watched as a man was struck while walking toward a 7-Eleven on the corner.

Fortunately, the man popped to his feet “like nothing ever happened” and hustled into the store, Reid said.A week or two prior, he said, an out-of-control motorist nearly plowed into the statue of Amelia Earhart that sits next to a library bearing the famous aviator’s name.“This is really a bad spot.” said Reid, who has helped run a Jamaican food pop-up at the busy street corner for five years.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s an old lady crossing the street with a walker.”The number of Angelenos who die in traffic crashes now regularly outpaces those killed by homicide.From 2016 to 2023, the annual traffic death toll rose nearly 29% overall, and pedestrian deaths jumped roughly 54%.

Fatal crashes fell slightly last year, but deaths still exceeded 300 in each of the last three years.The city is rolling out 125 speed cameras in school zones, known street-racing corridors and places where speeding has contribute to a high rate of collisions — including Reid’s intersection.

But for him, the cameras aren’t a replacement for police traffic enforcement, which he said seems virtually nonexistent.Even though LAPD squad cars are posted outside the library “every day,” he says, officers rarely do anything about the drivers who come careening off the exit ramps from the nearby 170 Freeway.Similar complaints are being echoed around the city.Historically, Los Angeles — like other places across the U.S.

— has relied on police stops to produce road safety.But in recent years, public pressure has...