October is National Pedestrian Safety Month.

Governor Andy Beshear and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet are asking drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to stay safe in light of an uptick in road deaths.

Pedestrian fatalities reached a 40 year high across the U.S. last year.

Kentucky saw a bump, too, says Bill Bell, executive director of Kentucky's Office of Highway Safety.

We've always focused on seatbelt safety and impaired driving, but over the past couple of years, basically since the pandemic, we've put more of an emphasis on pedestrian safety.

In 2022, 96 pedestrians were killed on Kentucky roads.

That's up almost 30% from the year before.

So far, 69 pedestrians have been killed this year.

Bell says pedestrians should be vigilant at night.

That's when most accidents occur and everyone needs to pay more attention to the road in front of them instead of the screens in their hands.

One thing that you don't want to be doing is you don't want to cross the road and be on your phone.

You don't want to be distracted while walking.

But we're seeing a lot of problems with drivers being distracted as well.

Stay off your phone, especially in dense urban areas where there's a lot of foot traffic.

These actions can save lives, but transportation officials know there are other solutions.

We still look at what we can do from an engineering perspective as well as behavioral perspective.

Pedestrians are more likely to be hit on roads in Kentucky's larger cities.

Bell says a third of Kentucky's pedestrian deaths happened in Louisville last year.

That's why the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has partnered with the city of Louisville to figure out what safety features can be built into the river cities, roads and walkways.

Small changes.

Now we've already started like re striping where there's the walkway is not as visible as it should be.

And so some of the things we're learning in Louisville Metro and have learned over the past few months, we will spread those throughout the state.

Last year, Louisville adopted a Vision Zero approach.

The goal is to eliminate all pedestrian deaths by 2050.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

We'll hear later this week how Kentucky cities are redesigning roads to make them safer.