The most dangerous places to cross the street

Crossing the street can seem like such a simple thing. But there was some logic behind Mom telling you to look both ways first — an average of 13 people are struck and killed by a car while walking every day, according to the fourth edition of the Dangerous by Design report.

That same report (issued by Smart Growth America's program National Complete Streets Coalition) found that between 2005 and 2014, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than if they were in a natural disaster. Probably not what you'd expect, right?

There were 46,149 pedestrian deaths nationally during the decade analyzed. While the number of pedestrian deaths each year are higher in big cities like New York City and Los Angeles, when adjusted for things like population and the number of people who commute by foot on a regular basis, these two cities (nor the states they're in) didn't even break into the top 20.

The report looked at the 104 largest metro areas in the U.S., as well as all 50 states, using a Pedestrian Danger Index with data from the time period we mentioned earlier. This Index used the most recent U.S. Census data to establish the pedestrian data, the American Community Survey for population numbers and Fatality Analysis Reporting System data. The trends were calculated using at least a 90% confidence interval.

Based on this information, these are the 20 states where you may want to look both ways a second or third time before crossing the street (or maybe let the chicken go first just to make sure it gets to the other side).

You can find the full list of the most dangerous places to cross the street on Credit.com.

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This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

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