Transportation Sec. Buttigieg Repeats Claim that Racist Roads Are Causing Minority Car Crashes

“A lot of people don’t understand, even down to road fatalities, it is not equal,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Saturday, repeating his claim that racism has made America’s roads deadly to minorities.

“We have a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America. We lose about 40,000 people every year. It’s a level that is comparable to gun violence,” Buttigieg told MSNBC Host Al Sharpton on Saturday, blaming “discrimination” for “disparities” in the number of minority drivers and pedestrians killed on the nation’s roads:

“And we see a lot of racial disparities. Black and Brown Americans, tribal citizens and rural residents are much more likely to lose their lives, whether it’s in a car or as a pedestrian being hit by a car.

“There are a lot of reasons related to discrimination and related to even the ways that roads are designed and built, who has access to a safe street design that has crosswalks and good lighting, who doesn’t have that access that can drive disparities, and we have a responsibility to act on that.”

This isn’t the first time Buttigieg has blamed road racism.

In November of 2021, the transportation secretary claimed that “racism” drove the construction of a highway and an underpass in New York:

“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, or that would have been in New York, was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices.”

Buttigieg doubled down on his accusations later that month in an interview with MSNBC:

“What we’re doing is we are reconnecting people who may have been disconnected or divided by discriminatory decisions in the past. That helps everybody. I don’t know why anybody would be against reconnecting people who have been divided by discriminatory decisions in the past.”