Our cars are full of distractions — we can cash a check while waiting for a light to turn, convene a work meeting on the straightaway, and watch our own progress on a map while the kids enjoy a movie in the backseat.

The world along the road is equally in motion. Cars brake, swerve, stop. Litter and leaves blow. Creatures — including humans — dart, jog, walk in and along the road. Sometimes, drivers can’t stop in time to prevent a collision.

On Tuesday, a 7-year-old child was hit while running across the street to the bus stop. His injuries were slight, thankfully.

But a month earlier a 17-year-old was struck at the bus stop, and needed to be hospitalized. In August, a 77-year-old woman was struck and killed in the Shop-N-Save parking lot and a 76-year-old woman and killed while walking southbound on Traverse Field Drive. A year before, a 19-year-old Traverse City woman was struck and killed while jogging on River Road.

Nationally, even as driving itself slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, pedestrian fatalities surged 21 percent from 2019 to 2020 — the largest spike since the government’s tracking system was established in 1975, according to Forbes.

The number of pedestrians killed in Michigan rose 19 percent, from 149 people to 178 in the same time period, according to preliminary data from the Governors Highway Safety Association. Reckless, dangerous and distracted driving were named causes, as is the rise in SUVs on the roads, which can be more fatal to pedestrians. More than half of the collisions occurred in the dark.

We need to brake hard on this terrifying upswing. There is a natural tendency when a crash happens to focus on the mitigating circumstances surrounding each scenario, to lay blame. The fact-finding makes us smarter overall, but also lets us dismiss the lesson when we determine it hard to relate to.

But we believe all of us — walkers, drivers, parents, children — can do a little better.

We parents can better drill our kids on road safety, teaching them to look both ways, cross at crosswalks, make eye contact with drivers, and never dart from parked cars. We drivers can focus better on the task at hand, keeping bike lanes clear, double-checking our mirrors before we turn, expecting the unexpected and adjusting speed so we can react quickly.

As the nights grow longer, all of us can moderate the limited visibility with lights, reflective gear and an abundance of caution.

On our roads, in our cars, the distractions are many. Keeping pedestrians safe needs our focus.