As expected, the latest report from the Governors Highway Safety Association shows the yearslong trend of increasing pedestrian fatalities isn’t easing up.

Actually, the numbers indicate that the United States could be barreling toward another grim milestone.

The Feb. 28 report states there were 3,434 pedestrian deaths during the first six months of 2022. That’s 168 more than the same period in 2021, a 5 percent increase.

“There is a pedestrian safety crisis on our roads and it’s getting worse,” said Adam Snider, director of communications for the GHSA. “Drivers killed 19 pedestrians every day during the first half of 2022. Every 75 minutes, someone went for a walk and didn’t return home.

We need to do more of everything that works to reverse this awful trend.”

The report comes on the heels of what has already been a historically awful stretch along American roadways.

The GHSA had previously reported that drivers struck and killed 7,845 people in 2021 — an average of 20 deaths per day. It was also an 11.5 percent increase from 2020 and the most in a single year in four decades.

And pedestrian deaths are increasing faster than all other traffic fatalities, surging 54 percent from 2010 to 2020 compared with all others, which increased 13 percent.

At the state level, pedestrian fatalities increased in 24 states during the first half of 2022. Fifteen reported more pedestrian fatalities for the second consecutive year, while only two states reported back-to-back annual decreases.

South Carolina was one of 21 states that reported fewer deaths between January and June 2022, compared with the same span a year earlier. Seventy-five people were killed along South Carolina roadways, down from 82 during the first six months of 2021.

“Many communities across the country are taking important steps to improve pedestrian safety, and traffic safety more generally,” said Joe Young, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Quite a few communities have been lowering speed limits, which IIHS research has tied to lower travel speeds.

“The number of communities implementing automated speed enforcement is also on the rise in recent years after having declined for much of the last decade.

Speed cameras are proven to reduce speeding and cut crash rates and can help promote equitable enforcement of speed limits. It’s likely that states that are trending in the right direction are taking important steps to do so.”

The GHSA will release its full 2022 report later this year. Officials expect that review, like its predecessors, will also show a rise in pedestrian deaths.

“While the statistics might be unsurprising,” Snider said, “we cannot afford to be complacent and accept even a single death of a person walking as the price of a modern roadway system. These senseless deaths are preventable.”