percent in the past five years. In 1998, the last year for which national
      figures are available, more than 5,200 pedestrians were killed and 70,000
      were injured. Most of them were either senior citizens or youths under 16.
      Groups fighting for pedestrians have a simple explanation for that trend:
      They say fewer people are daring to go anywhere on foot because of the
      risks. And transportation analysts say they may have a point. In a 1990
      national survey, the Transportation Department found that walking
      accounted for 7 percent of all personal trips. Five years later, it had
      fallen to 5 percent.

      "I live in a beautiful community, but you can't walk in it," said Adrienne
      Leigh, a mother of two young children in the Silicon Valley suburb of
      Hillsborough. "Hardly anyone even tries. There aren't enough sidewalks and
      crosswalks."

      Leigh said the elementary school her oldest child attends is only a few
      blocks away. But like most of her neighbors, she drives there every day.
      Last year, she decided that something had to be done about that predicament.

      Working with other frustrated parents and senior citizens, she organized a
      community group called Safe Paths. They keep in touch mostly by e-mail and
      attend city hearings to make their case for pedestrians. They also just
      chalked up their first victory: The city has agreed to hire a traffic
      safety consultant to examine how schools and parks can be enhanced for
      anyone on foot or a bike.

      "It's a good first step," Leigh said. "People are starting to realize that
      everything shouldn't always just be about making everything easier for cars."

      In its goals and its tone, her campaign resembles others emerging along
      the West Coast. Many of the activists are not advocating radical and
      expensive shifts to public transportation or denouncing cars as all bad.
      That fight, some say, seems futile. Instead, their agenda is more urgent
      and modest: to demand that cities simply do more to protect them from
      motorists. And to persuade suburban planners to consider the needs of
      pedestrians and cyclists whenever they turn old pastures into new
      residential cul-de-sacs.

      At times, even that is a hard sell. Some homeowners who have moved to a
      distant suburb prefer to keep its remaining rural character. Others are
      worried that crosswalks and lower speed limits will make bad traffic
      congestion only worse.

      "There's progress, but it's still difficult," said Zac Wald, who leads a
      group in the San Francisco Bay Area called Bay Peds. "People want traffic
      to move faster. And communities keep getting built in ways that force
      people into their cars for everything. Where do you think the term 'soccer
      moms' came from, anyway? They're at practice with their kids because they
      had to drive there."

      In Santa Rosa, that mind-set is fading. The city, whose population of
      140,000 has nearly tripled in the past 30 years, still has growing pains.
      Farmland on its fringes is getting torn up all the time to make way for
      new homes and schools--except now, the city also has made a commitment to